Saturday, October 11, 2008

Frank O'Hara Worries about a Leaf

Les Ettiquettes jaunes

I picked up a leaf
today from the sidewalk.
This seems childish.

Leaf! you are so big!
How can you change your
color, then just fall!

As if there were no
such thing as integrity!

You are too relaxed
to answer me.  I am too
frightened to insist.

Leaf!  Don't be neurotic
like the small chameleon.

--Frank O'Hara
Meditations in an Emergency, Grove Press, 1957

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