Summary
After recognizing Holiday's face on the cover of New York Post, the speaker notices that he is sweating considerably, partly from the summer heat, and partly from shock. He thinks back to the night he witnessed Holiday perform a song with Mal Waldron, Holiday's long-time friend and a famous jazz pianist, at the 5 Spot Club in Manhattan's Bowery neighborhood, as he leaned against the bathroom door. As Holiday sang, her voice like a whisper, the speaker remembers that he, and everyone else in the audience, stopped breathing.
Analysis
These final lines considerably diverge from the poem's previous stanzas in tone, pace, and atmosphere. We see the speaker in a moment of stasis, captive to the power of Holiday's voice. When the speaker says "everyone and I stopped breathing," he allows the poem to suspend itself in a moment of tension where the reader must imagine how it must have felt to stand where the speaker stood, watching Holiday sing. We finally recognize that this poem is an elegy: O'Hara intends to reflect upon Holiday's death by describing the role it played in his day, as an event greater in magnitude than the necessary errands he must complete.
