PHOTOS: Robert Doisneau <br /><br />MUSIC: Lester Young, All of Me <br /><br />POEM: Frank O'Hara, River <br /><br />Whole days would go by, and later their years, <br />while I thought of nothing but its darkness <br />drifting like a bridge against the sky. <br />Day after day I dreamily sought its melancholy, <br />its searchings, its soft banks enfolded me, <br />and upon my lengthening neck its kiss <br />was murmuring like a wound. My very life <br />became the inhalation of its weedy ponderings <br />and sometimes in the sunlight my eyes, <br />walled in water, would glimpse the pathway <br />to the green sea. For it was there I was being borne. <br />Then for a moment my strengthening arms <br />would cry out upon the leafy crest of air <br />like whitecaps, and lightning, swift as pain, <br />would go through me on its way to the forest, <br />and I’d sink back upon the brutal tenderness <br />that bore me on, that held me like a slave <br />in its liquid distances of eyes, and one day, <br />though weeping for my caresses, would abandon me, <br />moment of infinitely salty air! Sun fluttering <br />like a signal! Upon the open flesh of the world.
