Frank O’Hara, For Janice and Kenneth to Voyage

Love, love, love,
honeymoon isn’t used much in poetry these days
and if I give you a bar
of Palmolive Soap
it would be rather cracker-barrel
of me, wouldn’t it?
The winds will wash you out your hair, my dears.
Passions will become turrets, to you.
I’ll be so afraid
without you.
The penalty of the Big Town
is the Big Stick,
yet when you were laughing nearby
the monsters ignored me like a record-player
and I felt brilliant
to be so confident
that the trees
would walk back to Birnam Wood.
It was all you, your graceful white smiles
like a French word, the one for nursery, the one for brine.