"Music" by Frank O'Hara

                              MUSIC

       If I rest for a moment near The Equestrian
pausing for a liver sausage sandwich in the Mayflower

                                                                      Shoppe,
that angel seems to be leading the horse into

                                                                 Bergdorf’s
and I am naked as a table cloth, my nerves humming.
Close to the fear of war and the stars which have

                                                                disappeared.
I have in my hands only 25¢ , it’s so meaningless to eat!
and gusts of water spray over the basins of leaves
like the hammers of a glass pianoforte. If I seem to you
to have lavender lips under the leaves of the world,       
       I must tighten my belt.
It’s like a locomotive on the march, the season       
       of distress and clarity
and my door is open to the evenings of midwinter’s
lightly falling snow over the newspapers.
Clasp me in your handkerchief like a tear, trumpet
of early afternoon! in the foggy autumn.
As they’re putting up the Christmas trees on Park

                                                                        Avenue
I shall see my daydreams walking by with dogs in

                                                                          blankets,
put to some use before all those coloured lights come on!       
       But no more fountains and no more rain,       
       and the stores stay open terribly late.

Source of the text – Frank O’Hara, Lunch Poems.  San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1964, pp. 1-2.

Bourguignomicon: Even in early Christmastime a poetic state—pause, nerve hum, locomotive, open door—may arise. Hear the extraordinary imperative “clasp me”.