Stuart Masters, FRIEND

Our friendship sings of love

As Gwen’s voice has soared and swooped

Over German opera houses and Hainault halls

The children part

A Red Sea of youth embraces corridor walls

As our friend hears a bell

And rushes to the door

Outside is the lunchtime sky

For a short while there are no bells

No lesson plans

Just friendship

Which she loves like Mozart

Benjamin Britten, Richard Strauss

And green, too, she loves

The colour of her voice which

Like her friendship

Always takes us to another place

Diane Shorrock, The Perfect Circle

The perfect circle

Beautiful to behold

Strayed into the land of jagged edges 

The circle was tired of perfection

And sought friendship

With the linear and sharp

A piercing of the image

The ultimate form

 Lonely in its beauty

Eager for friendship

Glided over to the equal shape

Of the singular triangle

Who with pointed head

Head butted the circle away

Bouncing from this rebuff

The beautiful circle

Found itself surrounded by

Thick war like zig-zag lines

Angry and ready for war on the shape

Of no beginning and no end

The frenzied lines began to charge

.

The circle sensing danger

With sadness of heart

Shed circular tears of sadness

 For the lost circle of friendship

That could not exist

 In the jagged edge world

Then with circular swiftness,

The circle flew high into the sky

And from above saw the Land of Lines

 In vertical disarray

Escaping the parallel lines of fury

That discharged into the sky

The circle returned home

Happy to return to the Circular Land

Of circular friendship.

Ben Jonson, Inviting a Friend to Supper

TO-NIGHT, grave sir, both my poore house, and I

Doe equally desire your companie:

Not that we thinke us worthy such a guest,

But that your worth will dignifie our feast,

With those that come; whose grace may make that seeme

Something, which, else, could hope for no esteeme.

It is the faire acceptance, Sir, creates

The entertaynment perfect: not the cates.

Yet shall you have, to rectifie your palate,

An olive, capers, or some better sallad

Ushring the mutton; with a short-leg'd hen,

If we can get her, full of eggs, and then,

Limons, and wine for sauce: to these, a coney

Is not to be despair'd of, for our money;

And, though fowle, now, be scarce, yet there are clerkes,

The skie not falling, thinke we may have larkes.

I'll tell you of more, and lye, so you will come:

Of partrich, pheasant, wood-cock, of which some

May yet be there; and godwit, if we can:

Knat, raile, and ruffe too. How so e'er, my man

Shall reade a piece of VIRGIL, TACITUS,

LIVIE, or of some better booke to us,

Of which wee'll speake our minds, amidst our meate;

And I'll professe no verses to repeate:

To this, if ought appeare, which I know not of,

That will the pastrie, not my paper, show of.

Digestive cheese, and fruit there sure will bee;

But that, which most doth take my Muse, and mee,

Is a pure cup of rich Canary-wine,

Which is the Mermaids, now, but shall be mine:

Of which had HORACE, or ANACREON tasted,

Their lives, as doe their lines, till now had lasted.

Tabacco, Nectar, or the Thespian spring,

Are all but LUTHERS beere, to this I sing.

Of this we will sup free, but moderately,

And we will have no Pooly, or Parrot by;

Nor shall our cups make any guiltie men:

But, at our parting, we will be, as when

We innocently met. No simple word

That shall be utter'd at our mirthfull board

Shall make us sad next morning: or affright

The libertie, that wee'll enjoy to-night.

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.

Frank O’Hara, Poem Read at Joan Mitchell’s

At last you are tired of being single

the effort to be new does not upset you nor the effort to be other

you are not tired of life together

city noises are louder because you are together

being together you are louder than calling separately across a telephone one to the other

and there is no noise like the rare silence when you both sleep

even country noises—a dog bays at the moon, but when it loves the moon it bows, and the hitherto frowning moon fawns and slips

Only you in New York are not boring tonight

it is most modern to affirm some one

(we don’t really love ideas, do we?)

and Joan was surprising you with a party for which I was the decoy

but you were surprising us by getting married and going away

so I am here reading poetry anyway

and no one will be bored tonight by me because you’re here

Yesterday I felt very tired from being at the FIVE SPOT

and today I felt very tired from going to bed early and reading ULYSSES

but tonight I feel energetic because I’m sort of the bugle,

like waking people up, of your peculiar desire to get married

It’s so

original, hydrogenic, anthropomorphic, fiscal, post-anti-esthetic, bland, unpicturesque and WilliamCarlosWilliamsian!

it’s definitely not 19^th Century, it’s not even Partisan Review, it’s new, it must be vanguard!

Tonight you probably walked over here from Bethune Street

down Greenwich Avenue with its sneaky little bars and the Women’s Detention House,

across 8^th Street, by the acres of books and pillows and shoes and  illuminating lampshades,

past Cooper Union where we heard the piece by Mortie Feldman with “The Stars and Stripes Forever” in it

and the Sagamore’s terrific “coffee and, Andy,” meaning “with a cheese Danish”—

did you spit on your index fingers and rub the CEDAR’s neon circle for luck?

did you give a kind thought, hurrying, to Alger Hiss?

It’s the day before February 17^th

it is not snowing yet but it is dark and may snow yet

dreary February of the exhaustion from parties and the exceptional desire for spring which the ballet alone, by extending its run, has made bearable, dear New York City Ballet company, you are quite a bit like a wedding yourself!

and the only signs of spring are Maria Tallchief’s rhinestones and a perky little dog barking in a bar, here and there eyes which suddenly light up with blue, like a ripple subsiding under a lily pad, or with brown, like a freshly plowed field we vow we’ll drive out and look at when a certain Sunday comes in May—

and these eyes are undoubtedly Jane’s and Joe’s because they are advancing into spring before us and tomorrow is Sunday

This poem goes on too long because our friendship has been long, long for this life and these times, long as art is long and uninterruptable,

and I would make it as long as I hope our friendship lasts if I could  make poems that long

I hope there will be more

more drives to Bear Mountain and searches for hamburgers, more evenings  avoiding the latest Japanese movie and watching Helen Vinson and Warner Baxter in Vogues of 1938 instead, more discussions in lobbies of the respective greatnesses of Diana Adams and Allegra Kent,

more sunburns and more half-mile swims in which Joe beats me as Jane watches, lotion-covered and sleepy, more arguments over  Faulkner’s inferiority to Tolstoy while sand gets into my bathing trunks

let’s advance and change everything, but leave these little oases in case the heart gets thirsty en route

and I should probably propose myself as a godfather if you have any children, since I will probably earn more money some day accidentally, and could teach him or her how to swim

and now there is a Glazunov symphony on the radio and I think of our friends who are not here, of John and the nuptial quality  of his verses (he is always marrying the whole world) and Janice and Kenneth, smiling and laughing, respectively (they are probably laughing at the Leaning Tower right now)

but we are all here and have their proxy

if Kenneth were writing this he would point out how art has changed women and women have changed art and men, but men haven’t changed women much

but ideas are obscure and nothing should be obscure tonight

you will live half the year in a house by the sea and half the year in a house in our arms

we peer into the future and see you happy and hope it is a sign that we will by happy too, something to cling to, happiness

the least and best of human attainments