Ave Maria

By Frank O'Hara 1926–1966 Frank O'Hara

Mothers of America

let your kids go to the movies!

get them out of the house so they won’t know what you’re up to

it’s true that fresh air is good for the body

but what about the soul

that grows in darkness, embossed by silvery images

and when you grow old as grow old you must

they won’t hate you

they won’t criticize you they won’t know

they’ll be in some glamorous country

they first saw on a Saturday afternoon or playing hookey

they may even be grateful to you

for their first sexual experience

which only cost you a quarter

and didn’t upset the peaceful home

they will know where candy bars come from

and gratuitous bags of popcorn

as gratuitous as leaving the movie before it’s over

with a pleasant stranger whose apartment is in the Heaven on Earth Bldg

near the Williamsburg Bridge

oh mothers you will have made the little tykes

so happy because if nobody does pick them up in the movies

they won’t know the difference

and if somebody does it’ll be sheer gravy

and they’ll have been truly entertained either way

instead of hanging around the yard

or up in their room

hating you

prematurely since you won’t have done anything horribly mean yet

except keeping them from the darker joys

it’s unforgivable the latter

so don’t blame me if you won’t take this advice

and the family breaks up

and your children grow old and blind in front of a TV set

seeing

movies you wouldn’t let them see when they were young

Frank O’Hara, “Ave Maria” from Lunch Poems. Copyright © 1964 by Frank O’Hara. Reprinted with the permission of City Lights Books, www.citylights.com/CLpub.html.

Source: The Collected Poems of Frank O'Hara (1995)

Biography

Frank O'Hara was a dynamic leader of the "New York School" of poets, a group that included John Ashbery, Barbara Guest, Kenneth Koch, and James Schuyler. The Abstract Expressionist painters in New York City during the 1950s and 1960s used the title, but the poets borrowed it. From the beginning O'Hara's poetry was engaged with the worlds of music, dance, and painting. In that complex of associations he devised an idea of poetic . . .

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