Ode

I don't eat wheat
and I wear my violin strings
around my neck in case I need them

Snow is being sent from the mountains
I lie down like the flowers
it is an elevator shaft, this island

Sweet nursery rhyme describing manna
and how far away all that is good is
and music, too

when I am absent weeps
as if the children overburdened
by my incessant playing

Oh heart described
you are being pushed out of existence
by a mysterious swelling

Men are angels

[New York, July 1954] 

From Poems Retrieved by Frank O'Hara (City Lights). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the the publisher.