Day 980: In Favor Of One's Time

'it's also pretty hard to remember life's marvellous
but there it is guttering choking then soaring...'

I've never read a line with three 'thats' in it before, but there is one here in a poem so full of verve, its clunkiness flows perfectly rather than stalls.  Like a stuttering kind of wonder, the line is representative of the whole poem which swings along with Frank O'Hara's characteristic tempestuous feeling and wonder. Guaranteed to put a swing in your step!

In Favor Of One's Time - Frank O'Hara
 
The spent purpose of a perfectly marvellous
life suddenly glimmers and leaps into flame
it's more difficult than you think to make charcoal
it's also pretty hard to remember life's marvellous
but there it is guttering choking then soaring
in the mirrored room of this consciousness
it's practically a blaze of pure sensibility
and however exaggerated at least something's going on
and the quick oxygen in the air will not go neglected
will not sulk or fall into blackness and peat

an angel flying slowly, curiously singes its wings
and you diminish for a moment out of respect
for beauty then flare up after all that's the angel
that wrestled with Jacob and loves conflict
as an athlete loves the tape, and we're off into
an immortal contest of actuality and pride
which is love assuming the consciousness of itself
as sky over all, medium of finding and founding
not just resemblance but the magnetic otherness
that that that stands erect in the the spirit's glare
and waits for the joining of an opposite force's breath

so come the winds into our lives and last
longer than despair's sharp snake, crushed before it conquered
so marvellous is not just a poet's greenish namesake
and we live outside his garden in pure tempestuous rights