#alfred corn

Here are Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery, looking not at all "downtown" (well, maybe Frank's argyll socks). Also, the text of a poem Frank wrote for John.

To John Ashbery

I can’t believe there’s not another world where we will sit and read new poems to each other high on a mountain in the wind. You can be Tu Fu, I’ll be Po Chü-i and the Monkey Lady’ll be in the moon, smiling at our ill-fitting heads as we watch snow settle on a twig. Or shall we be really gone? this is not the grass I saw in my youth! and if the moon, when it rises tonight, is empty —a bad sign, meaning “You go, like the blossoms.” Frank O'Hara

HAVING WORDS

They'd started meeting by night at the only local, A seething crowd drawn from among the loudest Words, swearing, conspiring, over tankards of ale. In sour chiaroscuro their clenched faces by moments Looked too grievance or was it expressive for comfort. Rage drowns out background sounds such as summer Crickets, the result, that one of them, in humid Darkness, stops rasping his metal comb. It's clear That the rally of Words will turn demonic, That before night ends they'll be up in arms. Even the rawest learner can in a clock tick Become aware of the name it's called by. Which He tries on Cricket Cricket till he thinks: Your name Amounts to a sound, nothing more. Trundling on Towards the defiant Words, he says, No. No, I Am Deuce.

George Lahey, 1866-1935The boy who heard choral welcomes sung to a Prince of Walesexiting from St. George’s Hall, as red and green flags brandishedtheir dragons under grey skies. The Merseyside boystrolling the quays, whose Irish dad would steamship his dependentsto New York. The boy who became the grandfather I never knew.Should I picture him on deck, blinking at our green Colossus,torch flame…

When Edgar said, “Yes, us too,” I was surprised that he and Miriam were calling it quits; but even more by his “too,” which linked their separation to Renée’s and mine. I was sitting down, elbow resting on my worktable, the phone crackling in my ear. A patch of sunlight made one part of the carpet a brighter red than the rest, and the room’s atmosphere became more resolute, more final, as though…

Translated from the Lithuanian by Alfred Corn books sometimes appearand sometimes the god of winds whisks away our thoughtsand again capital letters drift awayfrom book titles from namesfrom livespunctuation marks no longer impedewordsthey fly off to other lipsand build a nest in ashtrays I’d really like to tell you everythingbut there in the cities we once fully trustedwhite noise…