Ballad by Frank O'Hara

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

*

Ballad

by Frank O'Hara