It is 12:20 in New York a Friday <br />three days after Bastille day, yes <br />it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine <br />because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton <br />at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner <br />and I don't know the people who will feed me <br /> <br />I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun <br />and have a hamburger and a malted and buy <br />an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets <br />in Ghana are doing these days <br /> I go on to the bank <br />and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard) <br />doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life <br />and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine <br />for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do <br />think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or <br />Brendan Behan's new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres <br />of Genet, but I don't, I stick with Verlaine <br />after practically going to sleep with quandariness <br /> <br />and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE <br />Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and <br />then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue <br />and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and <br />casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton <br />of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it <br /> <br />and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of <br />leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT <br />while she whispered a song along the keyboard <br />to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing<br /><br />Frank O'Hara<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-day-lady-died/
