Chickadees, my heart is full tonight. It's a strange period of new beginnings - my computer died, due to the strike of an electronics atom bomb of sorts (i.e. I dropped my digital camera INTO a cup of coffee, spilling a large quantity of coffee onto my laptop, phone, and ipod) and I lost most of my photographs of the last five years, and all of my music. Seems appropriate -- it's time for reassessment, to let go of some memories that I keep replaying, which I've already written poems about, so at this point it's just pointless masochism. Here to celebrate a time of change is a stunning poem by Frank O'Hara, re-posted from my dear Matthew Siegel's blog :
MAYAKOVSKY
1
My heart's aflutter!
I am standing in the bath tub
crying. Mother, mother
who am I? If he
will just come back once
and kiss me on the face
his coarse hair brush
my temple, it's throbbing!
then I can put on my clothes
I guess, and walk the streets.
2
I love you. I love you,
but I'm turning to my verses
and my heart is closing
like a fist.
Words! be
sick as I am sick, swoon,
roll back your eyes, a pool,
and I'll stare down
at my wounded beauty
which at best is only a talent
for poetry.
Cannot please, cannot charm or win
what a poet!
and the clear water is thick
with bloody blows on its head.
I embraced a cloud,
but when I soared
it rained.
3
That's funny! there's blood on my chest
oh yes, I've been carrying bricks
what a funny place to rupture!
and now it is raining on the ailanthus
as I step out onto the window ledge
the tracks below me are smoky and
glistening with a passion for running
I leap into the leaves, green like the sea
4
Now I am quietly waiting for
the catastrophe of my personality
to seem beautiful again,
and interesting, and modern.
The country is grey and
brown and white in trees,
snows and skies of laughter
always diminishing, less funny
not just darker, not just grey.
It may be the coldest day of
the year, what does he think of
that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,
perhaps I am myself again.
FRANK O'HARA
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2 comments:
Oh dear, I can't think of much worse in the practical stakes than to lose your photos and lose your work all in the spillage of a cup of coffee, or rather into a cup of coffee.
You sound quite sanguine now though I imagine you weren't at the time. O'Hara's poem is a joy in the circumstance. It seems to match perfectly the heart break of the moment.
I offer my commiserations. May it all be onwards and up from here on.
A beautiful poem. A really beautiful poem.
I try not to be dependent on technology. I have weird habits, like having to buy all of the books I read and other things similar to that. I'm a packrat, afraid to get rid of things.
Sometimes things just happen and we don't really have much of a choice.
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