Not Like a Baroque Ceiling or Anything

Very occasionally (like this morning) I will ride the train into Manhattan when the weather is just too pernicious and I am just too lazy. When I take the Subway, I usually bring Frank O'Hara's collected along with me for company. This morning, I rediscovered the following:

Fond Sonore

In placing this particular thought
I am taking up the cudgel against indifference
I wish that I might be different but I am
that I am is all I have so what can I do

as the hero of the hour I might have one strange destiny
but it is all mixed up and I have several
I can’t choose between them they are pulling me aloft
which is not to say up like a Baroque ceiling or anything

where is the rain and the lightning to drown or burn us
as there used to be
where are the gods who could abuse and disabuse us often
when am I ever in the country walking along a lane plotting murder

you would think that the best things in life were free
but they’re the worst even the air is dirty
and it’s this "filth of life" that coats us against pain
so where are we back at the same old stand buying bagels

I think that is would be nice to go away
but that’s reserved for TV and who wants to end up in Paradise
it’s not our milieu
we would be lost as a fish is lost when it has to swim

and yet and yet
this place is terrible to see and worse to feel
along with the purple you have contracted for an awful virus
and it is Christmas and the children are growing up