My Love is of a birth as rare
As 'tis for object strange and high:
It was begotten by despair
Upon Impossibility.

Magnanimous Despair alone
Could show me so divine a thing,
Where feeble Hope could ne'r have flown
But vainly flapt its Tinsel Wing.

And yet I quickly might arrive
Where my extended Soul is fixt,
But Fate does Iron wedges drive,
And alwaies crouds itself betwixt.

For Fate with jealous Eye does see
Two perfect Loves; nor lets them close:
Their union would her ruine be,
And her Tyrannick pow'r depose.

And therefore her Decrees of Steel
Us as the distant Poles have plac'd,
(Though Loves whole world on us doth wheel)
Not by themselves to be embrac'd.

Unless the giddy Heaven fall,
And Earth some new Convulsion tear;
And, us to joyn, the World should all
Be cramp'd into a Planisphere.

As Lines so Love oblique may well
Themselves in every Angle greet:
But ours so truly paralel,
Though infinite can never meet.

Therefore the Love which us doth bind,
But Fate so enviously debarrs,
Is the Conjunction of the Mind,
And Opposition of the Stars.

Said to the man at the railroad station:
'I want a ticket just for one'
He said 'Well, if you insist
But where you wanna go, miss?'

Destination, Anywhere
East or west, I don't care
You see my baby don't want me no more
And this old world ain't got no back door

He looked at me with a funny face and said:
'Are you sure you want to go just anyplace?'
I said 'If you ever loved someone the way I love that man,
Surely, Mr. ticket agent, you could understand.'

Destination, Anywhere -
East or west, I don't care.
You see my baby don't want me no more,
And this old world ain't got no back door.

Cause if it did, it would swing both ways
And I would go right back to happy yesterdays
When I loved him tenderly
And all he did was leave...

As I stood at the window of the train
I thought I heard my baby call my name.
But it was just the conductor saying
'Which stop would you prefer?'

Destination Anywhere,
East or west, I don't care,
You see my baby don't want me no more,
And this old world ain't got no back door.

Dearest G., Let me say - modestly - you
Have unmade a great, though tired, man, who
Had only just glimps'd his summit, age fifty-two.
So you have dump'd me. I mean this: good for you.

I'm more man than I was before we start'd,
Yet what's left behind's much less than what's depart'd.
The best part of me - ugh, awful. I'm retard'd;
This, easily the worst poem I've yet , uh, undertaken.

Assam-stained mug; knuckled Pall-Mall butt, old Tamla 45;
The Penguin Book of English Verse, ed. Keegan, overdue;
Picked nostril; wrecked rhyme scheme; Conklin half-alive;
A study of this Flushing, Queens one-bedroom minus you.

I only read one poem, anymore: Marvell's Definition.
Spin solely Motown-mope, sweet Marvelettes' rendition.
(I only watch one film, too, Village of the Damned,
but that because the tape within my deck is jamm'd.)

Lordly Marvell, Hull's peer, Milton's savior: peerless;
And the Marvelettes' complaint - cosmic postmen won't deliver.
If Smokey Robinson's our 'greatest living poet' (says B. Dylan),
What of N. Ashford and V. Simpson? Not chopped liver.

Tilting on his axis, one beatnik -- aging, aching, stalling,
Grew horny hopes of untold planets realigning:
Mets winning pennants; critics melting; editors calling;
Bosom friend's prodigal in my arms; George resigning.

So - I boarded Fate's Tyrannick train: no shocker.
Bermuda honeymoon's scotched, at great cost:
Chlamydia, slipped disc, moldy Chinese takeout, chronic fatigue.
Lesson learned: Old beatnik shouldn't woo young rocker.
(Hey Ivan: clever travel agent told me hope's not lost:
Ticket's convertible: St. Pete! You, me, Grapefruit League!)