Night Clerk at the Hotel of Both Worlds

Phoning Frank O’Hara

65 Phoning Frank O’Hara I was on the phone when lightning stepped in And took the feeling from my left leg. Then I was sitting on a large, crowded couch. A party. André Breton entered the room with a bumblebee bat in his warbonnet: “Get married or stop being a surrealist!” “I’d rather get divorced and start being a rationalist,” I said, though he wasn’t Talking to me, but to an absent Frank O’Hara. John Ashbery was offering hors d’oeuvres From outdoors. “Here, have another—crime or revolution? Take your pick.” I’m not quite at home here, I thought—neither a Madonna nor a shameless Venus. But I settled down to watch the marvelous troublemakers. I hope the genie will explain to my students why I’m profoundly late, Give my diploma a decent burial, and speak into my phone Now and then. ...