Ballad by Frank O’Hara

BALLAD

Yes it is sickening that we come

                                                                        that we go that we dissembling live

                  that we leave that there is anywhere in the world someone like us

it is that we are always like a that never that

                                                                                                            why we it is me

why is it that I am always separated from the one I love it is because of

                  some final thing, that is what makes you a that, that I don’t do

                                    though everyone denies it who loves you

                                                                                          that makes you a that too

                  why is it that everyone denies it it’s apparent as the air

you breathe and you don’t want to be breathed do you

                                                                                                                              why don’t you

                  because it would make you that air

                                                                                            and if you were that air you                 

                                                                                                                              would have to hear yourself

no I will never do that

                                                      so when you speak to me I will always be other

it will be like the strains of an organist on a piano

                  you will hate certain intimacies which to me were just getting to know

                                                                                                            you

                                                                                                            and at the same time

                                                      you know that I don’t want to know you

                                    because the palm stands in the window disgusted

                  by being transplanted, she feels that she’s been outraged and she has

by well-wisher me, she well wishes that I leave her alone and my self alone

but tampering

                                    where does it come from? childhood? it seems good

                  because it brings back the that

                                                                                          that which we wish that which we want

that which a ferry can become can become a bicycle if it wants to get

                                                                                                            across the river

                                                                                                            and doesn’t care how

                                                                                          though you will remember a night

                                                                                          where nothing happened

                                    and we both were simply that

                                                                                          and we loved each other so

                                                                                          and it was unusual

——-this poem is so beautiful and sad