On the occasion of Emily Dickinson's birthday, and a day before Jerome Rothenberg's 80th, "Two Poems, after Emily Dickinson," written when he was about 20. From his collection "Retrievals: Uncollected & New Poems 1955-2010," available (at a discount) at junctionpress.com.
Note the final wicked slant rhyme.
Two Poems, after Emily Dickinson
1
The last train left at five o’clock,
Somehow we missed the way;
We’ll have to sit in waiting rooms
until eternity.
Tickets form an ark of snow,
Water comes in drops,
While this earth-bound passenger
Studies secret maps,
Inquires at the agent’s door
If the next train leaves,
Anxious to reduce delay
To a term of weeks.
When it chanced, we couldn’t tell
That it would always be
This waiting in a busy room
For immortality.
2
The birds attain superior life
The others never find;
I wish my obligations
Might dabble with the wind.
Within his strictest tenement
Deciduous to rise,
That wing confining aviary
To me were Paradise.
But mapping bounds of heaven,
Topographers will pause
Before they reach that other house,
And justify the jaws.
Essential circumscription,
I find its premise odd,
Which grants necessity of bird,
But contradicts the cat.
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