THE BACK OF THE BUILDING

None of the paintings Nan has done of our apartment

Shows the landscape from our kitchen window.

Our kitchen is all window. A kind of greenhouse

Tacked onto the back of a West 4th Street brownstone.

Did you know that between the buildings on 12th Street

And the buildings on Bank Street there's a series of yards

We overlook-with stockade fences, mini-

Basketball hoops for juniors, a painting studio,

Garden hoses, barbecues covered with tarps,

Sooty lawn chairs, and trees rising a bit higher than the

buildings,

Covered with ivy to about the third story?

Yes. Right here in Manhattan. Where the ground's so

precious.

The six-story building on Bank Street has a blank wall,

Beige and blank, on which ivy is growing nearly to the top.

No, it is not in leaf yet. This is only March.

And when it's green we will be gone. What it is now

Is whorls of clinging tendrils, complicated as nerve cells,

Crossed by the shadow of a tree which looks like an artery

system.

It all gets simpler at the top. Just beige cement

With an occasional exposed brick. Let me

Give you the address: 309 West 4th Street.

The apartment is on the second floor. It's owned

By Frieda M. Silvert, who's in her seventies. It could be,

By the time you're reading this she will have sold the

building

Which, though tiny, is probably worth millions.

Realtors call all the time. "No, this isn't Frieda,"

Says Nan. "Frieda's travelling." "No, this isn't

Mr. Silvert," I say. "He's gone." I'm telling you

These details, though, in case you ever find yourself walking

On West 4th Street. You'll see 309 above the transom

Of a beveled glass doorway. And now you'll know

What's in back of the building, and who's been living here.

Next you should go to 240 West roth Street

And gaze up at the morbid, sunset-colored,

Deep-red-brick façade, with its many windows.

Here, in 1951, Frank O'Hara and a few friends

Pretended to listen to Kenneth Koch on the wonders of

Europe,

Where Frank had not yet been, and would not yet go,

Till the Museum of Modern Art sent him

To Spain to arrange a show. So?-he kept thinking-

So? All he needed was here. His million friends.

The sunlight in the gorges and canyons. What couldn't grow

Right here where millions were exhaling so trees could

breathe?

Nothing. Everything is here. In the kitchen

Frieda has a small tree which has been shedding its leaves,

Though each day the sun (if there is sun) rises higher

Above the six-story building on Bank Street.

I wish we could stay to watch the leaves

Break out all over that blank beige wall facing our

kitchen,

And walk once more to the Art Greenwich movie

theater,

Where Rushmore and Forces of Nature are playing -

Which-as Frank O'Hara would say-is all the

nature we need.