MissPetra

Having a Coke with You
 
is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
 or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
 partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
 partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
 partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
 partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
 it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
 as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
 in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
 between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles
 
and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
 you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them
 
I look
 at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
 except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
 which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
 and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
 just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
 at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
 and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
 when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
 or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
 as the horse
 
it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
 which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it
 
Frank O’Hara