Andrew Marvel Addresses Science

by Richard Westley

The clock will tick, Biology hems and coughs,
only so long and then will quit
supplying one-half the ‘oval stuff’, she says,
needed to make life bearable.
This is her sorrow right enough.

Thirty-four planets like the earth
have circled that number of suns 
in you. My gospel must be, for what it’s worth,
before all your diems are carpe’d, it’s true,
to seize on some plan to father-forth

the supreme issue. Biology mandates
the ways of the heart conform
to the turn of a screw. Before it’s too late—
you’ll exhaust your man-dates!—
I’d gather the seed of a fellow or two.

I’m standing here neither for lesson nor rue.
I’m dripping my heart’s hardest pleasure.
So if you’d agree to take leisure with me,
we’ll disprove that natural law can’t be love
and liberate millions of suns in me,
imprisoning one to start rising in you.