Mayakovsky by Frank O'Hara

The following poem was part of Frank O'Hara's 1957 collection Meditations in an Emergency. O'Hara was a central figure in the New York art scene of the early 60s, before his death at the age of 40 in 1966.

Keen viewers of the 60s-based series Mad Men might recognise the volume as one of the books that Don Draper reads. Considering that Draper's character is detached to the point of being a virtual stranger to his own wife, one would have to imagine that the poems from Meditations..., which describe anxiety and alienation, would resonate with him.



1

My heart’s aflutter!

I am standing in the bath tub

crying. Mother, mother

who am I? If he

will just come back once

and kiss me on the face

his coarse hair brush

my temple, it’s throbbing!

then I can put on my clothes

I guess, and walk the streets.

2

I love you. I love you,

but I’m turning to my verses

and my heart is closing

like a fist.

Words! be

sick as I am sick, swoon,

roll back your eyes, a pool,

and I’ll stare down

at my wounded beauty

which at best is only a talent

for poetry.

Cannot please, cannot charm or win

what a poet!

and the clear water is thick

with bloody blows on its head.

I embrace a cloud,

but when I soared

it rained.

3

That’s funny! there’s blood on my chest

oh yes, I’ve been carrying bricks

what a funny place to rupture!

and now it is raining on the ailanthus

as I step out onto the window ledge

the tracks below me are smoky and

glistening with a passion for running

I leap into the leaves, green like the sea

4

Now I am quietly waiting for

the catastrophe of my personality

to seem beautiful again,

and interesting, and modern.

The country is grey and

brown and white in trees,

snows and skies of laughter

always diminishing, less funny

not just darker, not just grey.

It may be the coldest day of

the year, what does he think of

that? I mean, what do I? And if I do,

perhaps I am myself again.

Frank O'Hara, erstwhile curator at Museum of Modern Art and unofficial poet laurette of New York City