Chinese Jump

Poem [“At night Chinamen jump”]
by Frank O'Hara

At night Chinamen jump
on Asia with a thump

while in our willful way
we, in secret, play

affectionate games and bruise
our knees like China’s shoes.

The birds push apples through
grass the moon turns blue,

these apples roll beneath
our buttocks like a heath

full of Chinese thrushes
flushed from China’s bushes.

As we love at night
birds sing out of sight,

Chinese rhythms beat
through us in our heat,

the apples and the birds
move us like soft words,

we couple in the grace
of that mysterious race.

As Ron Padget wrote of this poem in his poem “Night Jump”: Frank O’Hara starts on “funny” and then goes on to write of love, mystery and of grace. Big Frank believes that this poem is a beautiful expression of the wonder and mystery and absurdity of life . . . the earthiness and the wonder, the humor and the joy of love and the grace that accompanies that coupling. It is even a little silly and that makes it all the better for its eschewing the solemnity of the coming together in love.