Homosexuality / Frank O'Hara

So we are taking off our masks, are we, and keeping 
our mouths shut? as if we'd been pierced by a glance! 

The song of an old cow is not more full of judgment 
than the vapors which escape one's soul when one is sick;

so I pull the shadows around me like a puff 
and crinkle my eyes as if at the most exquisite moment 

of a very long opera, and then we are off! 
without reproach and without hope that our delicate feet 

will touch the earth again, let alone "very soon." 
It is the law of my own voice I shall investigate. 

I start like ice, my finger to my ear, my ear 
to my heart, that proud cur at the garbage can 

in the rain. It's wonderful to admire oneself 
with complete candor, tallying up the merits of each 

of the latrines. 14th Street is drunken and credulous, 
53 rd tries to tremble but is too at rest. The good 

love a park and the inept a railway station, 
and there are the divine ones who drag themselves up 

and down the lengthening shadow of an Abyssinian head 
in the dust, trailing their long elegant heels of hot air 

crying to confuse the brave "It's a summer day, 
and I want to be wanted more than anything else in the world."