Frank O'Hara - John Button Birthday lyrics

Sentiments are nice, "The Lonely Crowd," a rift in the clouds appears above the purple, you find a birthday greeting card with violets which says "a perfect friend" and means "I love you" but the customer is forced to be shy. It says less, as all things must. But grease sticks to the red ribs shaped like a sea shell, grease, light and rosy that smells of sandalwood: it's memory! I remember JA staggering over to me in the San Remo and murmuring "I've met someone marvelous!" That's friendship for you, and the sentiment of introduction. And now that I have finished dinner I can continue. What is it that attracts one to one? Mystery? I think of you in PAris with a red beard, a theological student; in London talking to a friend who lunched with Dowager Queen MAry and offered her his last cigarette; in Los Angeles shopping at the Supermarket; on Mount Shasta, looking ... above all on Mount Shasta in your unknown youth and photograph. And then the way you straighten people out. How ambitious you are! And that you're a painter is a great satisfaction, too. You know how I feel about painters. I sometimes think poetry only describes. Now I have taken down the underwear I washed last night from the various light fixtures and can proceed. And the lift of our experiences together, which seem to me legendary. The long subways to our old neighborhood the near East 49th and 53rd and before them the laughing in bars till we cried, and the crying in movies till we laughed, the tenting tonight on the old camp grounds! how beautiful it is to visit someone for instant coffee! and you visiting Cambridge, Ma**achusetts, talking for two weeks worth in hours, and watching Maria Tallchief in the Public Gardens while the swan-boats slumbered. And now, not that I'm interrupting again, I mean your now, you are 82 and i am 03. and in 1984 I trust we'll still be high together. I'll say "Let's go to a bar" and you'll say "Let's go to a movie" and we'll go to both; like two old Chinese drunkards arguing about their favorite mountain and the million reasons for them both.