The Day Lady Died by Frank O’Hara
The Day Lady Died
Frank O'HaraIt is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed meI walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days
I go on to the bank
and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandarinessand for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on itand I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing
MARGINALIA
I remember you, Billie Holiday. I love you and it still hurts and perhaps this is the only thing I can do today, to sit with this elegy and read and read and listen to your voice and just feel, feel.
KEEP READING
SHARED WITH GRATITUDE
This poem appeared in Lunch Poems by Frank O'Hara, published by City Light Books, 1964. (Available direct from City Light Books • Also on: Amazon • Bookshop)
ABOUT FRANK O'HARA
Frank (Francis Russell) O’Hara was born in Maryland on March 27, 1926. O’Hara’s early work was considered both provocative and provoking. In 1952, his first volume of poetry, A City Winter, and Other Poems, attracted favorable attention; his essays on painting and sculpture and his reviews for ArtNews were considered brilliant. O’Hara became one of the most distinguished members of the New York School of poets, which also included Ashbery, James Schuyler, and Kenneth… (more)
Read more poems by Frank O'Hara • Find books by this poet on Amazon • Bookshop • Or view my library
ENDNOTES
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laura
i think that this poem isn’t as beatiful as some of the others but if you read it two times in a role u can see it’s beauty for what it is 😉
laura
when i read this poem i noticed it’s like a book, and i think that that gives it a very desireable pull to it.