billie holiday

• amerikalı şair frank o'hara, billie holiday'in ardından bir ağıt yazmıştır 1959 yılında: "the day lady died"... "herkesin ve benim nefesimi kesen bir şarkı fısıldadı" diye biten, hüznünü belli etmemek için dudaklarını ısıran bir şiir...
  
  - the day lady died -
  
  it is 12:20 in new york a friday
  three days after bastille day, yes
  it is 1959 and i go get a shoeshine
  because i will get off the 4:19 in easthampton
  at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
  and i don't know the people who will feed me
  
  i walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
  and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
  an ugly new world writing to see what the poets
  in ghana are doing these days
  in ghana are doing these days i go on to the bank
  and miss stillwagon (first name linda i once heard)
  doesn't even look up my balance for once in her life
  and in the golden griffin i get a little verlaine
  for patsy with drawings by bonnard although i do
  think of hesiod, trans. richmond lattimore or
  brendan behan's new play or le balcon or les nègres
  of genet, but i don't, i stick with verlaine
  after practically going to sleep with quandariness
  
  and for mike i just stroll into the park lane
  liquor store and ask for a bottle of strega and
  then i go back where i came from to 6th avenue
  and the tobacconist in the ziegfeld theatre and
  casually ask for a carton of gauloises and a carton
  of picayunes, and a new york post with her face on it
  
  and i am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
  leaning on the john door in the 5 spot
  while she whispered a song along the keyboard
  to mal waldron and everyone and i stopped breathing
  ...