Frank O'Hara, "Like"

LIKE

It's not so much, 
abstractions are available:
the lofty period of the mind
ending a sentence while the pain endures: 
departures, absences.

And you are still on the dock,
the smoke hasn't cleared from the last blast 
but the ship is already in The Narrows.

At noon I sit in Jim's Place waiting for George 
who is mopping the stage up, 
while two girls cry in the last row.

I think they got laid last night. 
But who didn't? it was a spring night.
Probably George did, too.

And now the ship has gone 
beyond come, sheets, windows, streets, telephones, and noises: 
to where I cannot go, 
not even a long distance swimmer like my self.