Cheer up, dear Lad!

Ages old, and stories untold

Lived there a man of exceeding gold

He moved from house to house

And from place to place

Yet never could he find the one he sought

So desperately he fought

For a glimpse of her eyes

Or her shining smiles

Over the earth he walked

Barefoot and distraught

“Flow, flowing river and sea”

He spoke to the great, blue body

“Where is she

Where has she hid

Under which tree, or in which lee,

Does she speak of me

“Poor, poor soul”

Thought the sea

“She no longer cares about he”

But unwilling to divulge this loss

Wanting to cover it up as to a lake does a moss

The sea sang this song back to he

He who cared for his lost love eternally

“O fairest man and noblest soul

Love will find you on some other knoll

Skip here or skip there

And some maiden fair

Is bound to appear

Love should not die because of one heartbreak

Let her soar again, over the heights of one mistake

But the man was hurt even further,

A dagger in the heart was that sea’s murmur

“Oh no! Oh no! It was never a mistake

How could you such a devilish lie make

She was my one and only, and my star and moon

She shone bright and made me swoon

Her voice lulled birds to sanguine sleep

Her virtue saved sinners from abysmal deep

Never a maiden lived so great

I am determined, never again to date!

So the man marched away from the sand

And went forlornly to the oak tree

His friend from childhood, wiser than the sea

“O oaky oaky ,best of friends,

Tell me how I can with a past lover make amends

For I love her still, and thinking of her gives me thrill

Well there be no end, to my pain and this insufferable trend

Oaky, oaky tell me now, or else, he laughed, and feigned to pretend,

I will make you go up up in smoky smoky!

The oak tree sighed, and through his xylem cried

“Dearest dear, have no fear,

Love is a cruel thing to those closest her

You will find another, I promise you brother,

Be happy and content

The world is full of lovers and good intent!”

“Oh no! Oh no!” The man refused to listen

You are wrong, you are wrong

She will come back to me before long

Leave me alone and may it forever be known

That oaky knows nothing but to breathe and moan

So the man marched away from the oak tree,

And decided at last his heavenly father to ask

“Father, Father up in the sky, please tell me why

She left me and hurt me, and evades my sigh

The man in the sky refused to answer

And instead delegated it to his brother, the earth-shaker

“Poseidon, Poseidon” cried Zeus, while eating mousse,

I’m too busy for this boy, and the hoi-polloi,

Do something strange and weird

And maybe tickle his beard

With a ground shaking and earth-quaking

So that he takes some significance

From the sky’s secret indifference

“All right, big brother” said Poseidon

Here I go, way way down below

And as he said this he belly-flopped

Into the sea, so flippantly trippingly

That a biggy wave the land sumptuously craved,

To fill his belly with the sounds of the depraved.

And who should be surfing on the sea, all along!

Other than the man’s lover, she of his hearty song

The wave lifted her up, and brought her to land

And the man waved, and smiled, and marveled out loud

“O the gods love me, they love me

She was brought by nature and without a fee!”

Outstretched arms, he reached to catch her

But woefully missed, and his lover surfed on and on

Until she smashed into a wall, her brains dashed and gone

“Fuck, this sucks” thought the man

“Well, surely heaven had a plan”

And before he knew it,

He saw a crowd of refugees

Scattered and distraught, many on their knees

Run from Athens and the Cyclades

And a beautiful woman wept and sighed

She laid on the ground and cried

“There, there dear, everything will be all right”

The woman had lost her husband, her donkey and her sight

But damn did she look good in velvet tights!

And so the man offered to take her home

“Mother, mother I cannot see”

“Is this man a God or some beauty?”

The mother looked the man up and down

And noticed his only two tooth were round

He was short as Napoleon and skinny as Sicily

He smelt of frogs, wafted of weary hogs

The mother was about to confirm

The man was worse than an earth-worm

When out of the corner of her eye

She the gold in his pocket did spy

And then with a cry of hip, hip, hurray

She said to her babe,

“Daughter, daughter barely-survivor of the water

“He is like Zeus in his aspect,

Brave and strong and correct

He is like Hercules in his physique

With a body you could endlessly critique

The daughter was won over by her sympathetic, and upright mother

And embraced blindly this traveling, Grecian lover.

“Thank the gods all and mighty,” laughed the man

This world is ordered and just and according to plan

The sea and the oak, and the sky

I owe a big and wholehearted apology

Love comes and goes according to her throes

One must just wait, and then let fate,

The rest accomplish by her silver plate!

So the man walked along, hearty and uplifted

His new lover in his arms, he shifted

“No my dear,” kiss me here and here

He moved her mouth from his chin and his ear

And so the two walked along, beyond the mount and by the lake

Over the old lover’s body they walked, by mistake

And kissed and kissed all night long

In his home miles and miles from Zeus’s throne.

So dear reader, we reach our lofty moral

Keep on going through life on your own laurel

And never over a long-lost lover quarrel

For someone new will pass by

Or someone old will die

And then man of gold

Will you a new babe take hold!