I'm not going to cry all the time
nor shall I laugh all the time,
I don't prefer one "strain" to another.
I'd have the immediacy of a bad movie,
not just a sleeper, but also the big,
overproduced first-run kind. I want to be
at least as alive as the vulgar. And if
some aficionado of my mess says "That's
not like Frank!", all to the good! I
don't wear brown and grey suits all the time,
do I? No. I wear workshirts to the opera,
often. I want my feet to be bare,
I want my face to be shaven, and my heart--
you can't plan on the heart, but
the better part of it, my poetry, is open.

Spoiler

Why is this song named "To a Poet"? Who is this poet? And who is Frank?
The omniscient Oracle of Delphi of our time, Google, has all the answers.

"You can't plan on the heart" is a quote from the poem "My Heart" by Francis Russell "FRANK" O'Hara, an American POET (1926-1966).

Here comes a simple story that would match all the lyrics:

While on tour in the United states, "she" (Klara or Johanna or a fictious character) falls in love with a person living there. She knows from the beginning she cannot stay there. When the tour is over she'll have to fly back to Europe. If she could have planned where, when and with whom to fall in love, of course she would have planned it differently, but "you can't plan on the heart". Back home (probably to Stockholm because it's so dark there in winter) she wallows in self-pity because her lover is so far away.

As a matter of fact, when the Söderberg sisters recorded this album together with the "Bright Eyes" musicians in the studio in Omaha, their younger brother Isaac fell in love with Mike Mogis daughter Stella. Klara and Johanna stated this in a radio interview.
Read more at http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/vi...bJcDykUwUTm.99