What Happened the Day a Poet Was Appointed Postmaster
With violet pencils
he wrote upon the back side
of returned love letters and lost light years
readdressing them
to eternity
Their cancelled postage stamps
wheeled away on round postmarks
and flew off like flying saucers
marked Moscow Los Angeles and New York
The moon turned to tenements
for lack of lovers
And a cancelled George Washington
flew over America
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Found in -> The Nation, 1865-1990: Selections from the Independent Magazine of Politics and Culture