magic on sunday: we shall have everything we want

there are three shoe boxes in my closet of things that make me happy. in them, you can find anything from hotel keys i’ve collected over the years, concert stubs, notes left on my desk from former coworkers, postcards from friends a world away, to admission tickets from every trip i’ve ever taken to the whitney. they’re my own personal treasure boxes, if you will.

i’ve had a long, slow weekend, and over it, i did a ton of reading. one of the things i read (a few times, actually), was the poem “ode to joy” by frank o’hara. it fills me with so much joy and ease because it sheds light on the ephemerality of everyday life in a way that calls for a deep sense of joy.

if i had it in physical form, it'd be tucked away in my “things that make me happy” shoe box, and this week i wanted to share it with you. the text is copied below, and i suggest following along as you listen to him recite it accompanied by a henry wolfe arrangement (you can do that here).

hopefully you'll love it as much as i do.

“ode to joy” by frank o’hara

we shall have everything we want and there’ll be no more dying
on the pretty plains or in the supper clubs
for our symbol we’ll acknowledge vulgar materialistic laughter
over an insatiable sexual appetite
and the streets will be filled with racing forms
and the photographs of murderers and narcissists and movie stars
will swell from the walls and books alive in steaming rooms
to press against our burning flesh not once but interminably
as water flows down hill into the full-lipped basin
and the adder dives for the ultimate ostrich egg
and the feather cushion preens beneath a reclining monolith
that’s sweating with post-exertion visibility and sweetness
near the grave of love
no more dying

***
we shall see the grave of love as a lovely sight and temporary
near the elm that spells the lovers’ names in roots
and there’ll be no more music but the ears in lips and no more wit
but tongues in ears and no more drums but ears to thighs
as evening signals nudities unknown to ancestors’ imaginations
and the imagination itself will stagger like a tired paramour of ivory
under the sculptural necessities of lust that never falters
like a six-mile runner from sweden or liberia covered with gold
as lava flows up and over the far-down somnolent city’s abdication
and the hermit always wanting to be lone is lone at last
and the weight of external heat crushes the heat-hating puritan
whose self-defeating vice becomes a proper sepulcher at last
that love may live

***
buildings will go up into the dizzy air as love itself goes in
and up the reeling life that it has chosen for once or all
while in the sky a feeling of intemperate fondness will excite the birds
to swoop and veer like flies crawling across absorbed limbs
that weep a pearly perspiration on the sheets of brief attention
and the hairs dry out that summon anxious declaration of the organs
as they rise like buildings to the needs of temporary neighbors
pouring hunger through the heart to feed desire in intravenous ways
like the ways of gods with humans in the innocent combination of light
and flesh or as the legends ride their heroes through the dark to found
great cities where all life is possible to maintain as long as time
which wants us to remain for cocktails in a bar and after dinner
lets us live with it
no more dying

magic on sunday: 01.15.18
the past tense - infinite bisous
only to trip and fall down again - katie dey
mind fields - no vacation
rest yr skull - magic potion
life's what you make it - joywave
follow me - the shacks
a great snake - the lemon twigs

until sunday,

meghan

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