1.

 

Salad of “baby” mesclun

with roast eggplant

(or was that zucchini?)

beets with goat cheese,

asparagus, French

 

lentils with cherry

tomatoes, apple,

coffee. Lunch is

a meal that is common

to many if not all

 

the world’s peoples. Teen-

agers at the next table

are eating hamburgers and

French fries from boxes

made to look like NYC

 

yellow cabs. A middle-

aged Chinese man slowly

pulls the white pith from

an orange. In Italy lunch

is a major event.

 

It can take all day.

Waiters there don’t like it

if you sit down and

just order a pizza, not a

whole meal, or so

 

I imagine. It always seems

like being in Europe

to drink wine at lunch.

A long leisurely

lunch on a sunny terrace

 

or dappled with shadows

of overhead arbor,

in Italy or Greece, with wine

and witty talk has always seemed

concomitant to the artist’s

 

life. Famous lunches:

Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe,

Le Déjeuner des cannotiers,

The Harvesters (Brueghel) here in

the Met. Looks pretty

 

basic: gruel or maybe

whey out of wooden bowls,

rough slices of bread,

pears from the tree overhead,

beer—mead?—from a pewter

 

tankard. No shade

for the workers, even

under that high-

branched tree. That

little turreted castle in

 

the corner, in its grove of

fruiting apple trees is so

adorable I want to

kiss it. The painting attracts

waves of intent, serious

 

viewers. The history of its

acquisition does not do much

credit to the Met. (I forget

why just now) though somehow

its being here today does. When

 

I leave the room, it is

for a second alone. I may have

to cancel my trip to Rome

but there’s a lot of Rome here:

looming marble palaces

 

of Fifth Avenue in full

sun dwarf Greek marbles

in east galleries. Here

I sat with Jimmy once

to rest, and came back

 

the day he died.

Marble family saying

goodbye. For years

I used to eat lunch

at my desk, almost never

 

went out. None of us

did. I used to be

impatient at the very

word “lunch”: “Where

shall we have lunch?” as though

 

there weren’t more

important things to be

doing in the middle

of the day. For some

people, everything seems

 

to revolve around

lunch—a framing

device for daily life.

Let’s face it, we all

 

3.

            ...lunch
             ah lunch
                         —Frank O’Hara

 

Leftover lentil soup,

bread and goat cheese,

salad. Consider

the importance of lunch

in Frank O’Hara’s life—

 

the poems of course, but

I mean the fact that

he went every day

(or so) to Larré’s

and drank negronis and “lunched”

 

with some friend, in

New York in the ‘50s and

‘60s, then went back

to the museum, wrote

his poem and went to work.

 

Those were the days

Of the three-martini

(or negroni) lunch,

Cheever, O’Hara (John),

“The Sweet Smell

 

of Success.” And of course

the ladies who lunch. I remember

an afternoon squandered

in the local branch of the San

Francisco public library

 

reading Truman Capote’s lunch

epic, “La Côte Basque”

in Esquire when it came out,

enjoying its pseudo-Proustian

New York glamour. I never ate

 

at or even went near

La Côte Basque, but

when I worked at the

gallery my boss used to

lunch there every week or

 

two with his very dignified

old lady friend, E.U.J.

when she came into

the city for that purpose

and a little shopping,

 

maybe a matinee?

Sondheim’s song, “The

Ladies who Lunch”

was first sung by Elaine

Stritch in “Company,”

 

and after they saw it

in April, 1971,

Jane Freilicher told

Jimmy Schuyler Elaine

Stritch was “just

 

like Garbo in

‘Camille.’” Did I say

my father has stopped

eating? No more

 

10.

 

The word “lunch”

originally meant a hunk, as of

bread or cheese (perhaps

derived from “lump”) as in

“He shall take breade

 

and cut it into

little lunches.” (Surflet’s

Country Farm, 1600).

“Luncheon” too originally

had this meaning, and even

 

the OED is uncertain

which came first.

“It is possible that luncheon

might have been extended

from lunch on the analogy

 

of the relation between

punch, puncheon, trunch,

truncheon.” (But what

is “puncheon,” what is

a “trunch”?) In Samuel

 

Johnson’s day, neither

“lunch” nor “luncheon”

had yet come to mean

a meal, per se. His

Dictionary (Second Edition

 

1756) gives the meaning:

“As much food

as one’s hand can hold,”

and cites Gay: “When hungry thou

stoodst starring like an oaf,/

 

I sliced the luncheon

from the barley loaf.”

First lunch outdoors this year:

tossed salad with scallops,