“I look at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world..”

by DRM


Hav­ing a Coke with You

BY Frank O’Hara

is even more fun than going to San Sebas­t­ian, Irún, Hen­daye, Biar­ritz, Bay­onne
or being sick to my stom­ach on the Trav­es­era de Gra­cia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a bet­ter hap­pier St. Sebas­t­ian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the flu­o­res­cent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before peo­ple and stat­u­ary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be any­thing as still
as solemn as unpleas­antly defin­i­tive as stat­u­ary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drift­ing back and forth
between each other like a tree breath­ing through its spectacles

and the por­trait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you sud­denly won­der why in the world any­one ever did them
I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the por­traits in the world
except pos­si­bly for the Pol­ish Rider occa­sion­ally and any­way it’s in the Frick
which thank heav­ens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beau­ti­fully more or less takes care of Futur­ism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descend­ing a Stair­case or
at a rehearsal a sin­gle draw­ing of Leonardo or Michelan­gelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impres­sion­ists do them
when they never got the right per­son to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that mat­ter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as care­fully
as the horse
it seems they were all cheated of some mar­vel­lous expe­ri­ence
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it