Anne Waldman

Bill Berkson, Anne, Lewis.

A Phonecall from Frank O’Hara 

“That all these dyings may be life in death”

I was living in San Francisco  

My heart was in Manhattan 

It made no sense, no reference point  

Hearing the sad horns at night,  

fragile evocations of female stuff  

The 3 tones (the last most resonant) 

were like warnings, haiku-muezzins at dawn 

The call came in the afternoon  

“Frank, is that really you?” 

I'd awake chilled at dawn 

in the wooden house like an old ship  

Stay bundled through the day 

sitting on the stoop to catch the sun 

I lived near the park whose deep green  

over my shoulder made life cooler  

Was my spirit faltering, grown duller? 

I want to be free of poetry's ornaments,  

its duty, free of constant irritation,  

me in it, what was grander reason  

for being? Do it, why? (Why, Frank?)  

To make the energies dance etc. 

My coat a cape of horrors 

I'd walk through town or 

impending earthquake. Was that it?  

Ominous days. Street shiny with  

hallucinatory light on sad dogs, 

too many religious people, or a woman  

startled me by her look of indecision  

near the empty stadium 

I walked back spooked by 

my own darkness 

Then Frank called to say 

“What? Not done complaining yet?  

Can't you smell the eucalyptus, 

have you never neared the Pacific?  

‘While frank and free/call for 

musick while your veins swell’”  

he sang, quoting a metaphysician  

"Don't you know the secret, how to  

wake up and see you don't exist, but  

that does, don't you see phenomena  

is so much more important than this?  

I always love that.” 

“Always?” I cried, wanting to believe him  

“Yes.” “But say more! How can you if  

it's sad & dead?” “But that's just it!  

If! It isn't. It doesn't want to be 

Do you want to be?” He was warming to his song  

“Of course I don't have to put up with as  

much as you do these days. These years.  

But I do miss the color, the architecture,  

the talk. You know, it was the life!  

And dying is such an insult. After all  

I was in love with breath and I loved  

embracing those others, the lovers,  

with my body.” He sighed & laughed  

He wasn't quite as I'd remembered him  

Not less generous, but more abstract  

Did he even have a voice now, I wondered  

or did I think it up in the middle  

of this long day, phone in hand now  

dialing Manhattan