Frank O’Hara and Bill Berkson at O’Hara’s apartment on 441 E. 9th St., NY, 1961 (
photo by John Button)
Song Heard Around St. Bridget’s
When you’re in love the whole world’s Polish
and your heart’s in a gold-stripped frame
you only eat cabbage and yogurt
and when you sign you don’t sign you own name
If it’s above you want and you know it
and the parting you want’s in your hair
the yogurt gets creamy and seamy
and the poles that you climb aren’t there
To think, poor St. Bridget, that you never got
to see an Ingmar Bergman movie
because you were forbidden our modern times
but you’re not as old as all that, you’re not a mummy
you saw the Armory Show and Louis Jouvet
and Mary of Scotland and ANCHORS AWEIGH
and we’re sure
that you’ve caught up with La Vie et Espirit poetically pure
and indeed quite contemporary and just as extraordinary
as ice cubes and STONES and dinosaur bones and manure
When you’re in love the whole world’s a steeple
and the moss is peculiarly green
you may not be liked or like people
but you know your love’s on your team
When you’re shaving your face is a snow bank
and your eyes are particularly blue
and your feelings may be fading and grow blank
but the soap is happy it’s you!
Joe Brainard’s collage-comic collaborations with O’Hara occurred in much the same way, except that Joe apparently had the courage to suggest collaborating, and the terms of doing it, himself. Like myself, Joe was a twenty-something interloper emboldened by O’Hara’s keen eye for talent at the get-go stage of its development. (Actually, by the mid ’60s when these collage comics were done, Joe had already refined his talent more than had any poet his own age.) W
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