"I first recognized art as wildness"

 

Up on the mountainous hill

behind the confusing house

where I lived. . . .

there,

the wind sounded exactly like

Stravinsky

I first recognized art

as wildness, and it seemed right

,

 

I mean rite, to me. . . .

"

for flowing

as it must throughout the miserable, clear and willful

life we love beneath the blue,

a fleece of pure intention sailing like

a pinto in a barque of slaves

who soon will turn upon their captors

lower anchor, found a city riding there

of poverty and sweetness paralleled

among the races without time,

and one alone will speak of being

born in pain

and he will be the wings of an extraordinary liberty[.]

"

     — Frank O'Hara, Standing Still and Walking in New York, 1975