Frank O'Hara
ON LOOKING AT LA GRANDE JATTE ,
THE CZAR WEPT ANEW
He paces the blue rug. It is the end of summer,
the end of his excursions in the sun. He
may now close his eyes as
if
they were tired flowers
and feel no sense of duty towards the corridor,
the recherche, the trees; they are all on his face,
a lumpy portrait, a painted desert. He is crying.
Only a few feet away the grass is green, the rug
he sees is grass; and people fetch each other in
and out of shadows there, chuckling and symmetrical.
The sun has left him wide-eyed and alone, hysterical
for snow, the blinding bed, the gun. "Flowers, flowers,
flowers!" he sneers, and echoes fill the spongy trees.
He cannot, after all, walk up the wall; the skylight
is sealed. For why? for a change
in
the season,
for a refurbishing of the house. He wonders if,
when the music is over, he should not take down
the drapes, take up the rug, and join his friends
out there near the lake, right here beside the lake!
"0 friends of my heart !" and they will welcome him
with open umbrellas, fig bars, handmade catapults!
Despite the card that came addressed to someone else,
the sad fisherman of Puvis, despite his own precious
ignorance and the wild temper of the people, he'll try!
