gripes; or, by their fruits shall ye know them
Because you dangle just beyond my reach
I try the harder to deserve you, darling.
There'd be no need to promise or beseech
like this were I an ant or fly or starling.
How tantalizing is your distance! Grind
my teeth and tear my hair out though I may,
I know if you fell in my lap I'd find
I didn't really want you anyway.
But then you're just the same: if I decide
to let you hang, you're always first to crack.
I don't know why. Perhaps it hurts your pride?
But when I turn away, you call me back.
And like a fool, I jump, for hour on hour;
but one day it'll be me who turns sour.
-----
Sometime around 1980.
Because you dangle just beyond my reach
I try the harder to deserve you, darling.
There'd be no need to promise or beseech
like this were I an ant or fly or starling.
How tantalizing is your distance! Grind
my teeth and tear my hair out though I may,
I know if you fell in my lap I'd find
I didn't really want you anyway.
But then you're just the same: if I decide
to let you hang, you're always first to crack.
I don't know why. Perhaps it hurts your pride?
But when I turn away, you call me back.
And like a fool, I jump, for hour on hour;
but one day it'll be me who turns sour.
-----
Sometime around 1980.