A sweetheart have you got?
I told him no, I've not
My heart is not sweet but bitter
bitter and badly broken


Imprisoned you are by desire
to make her servant of your fire


But she is so free and I so bound
this world whirling round
will when it hits the old refrain
find one less slave to sing it again


Extreme that is, whatever her beauty
To end it all for lust of body
or pain of heart or grief of soul
Is there nothing more past age of twenty


For a season only did I want
but now I have ceased
Ceased to want and ceased to care
for my life any


For just one pain
one loss of gain


Yet I was never stung or bited
as badly as by love unrequited
No, never so badly bit
as by love's unwanted respite


You have not seen the pain of age
Nor yet again its joys
These searing sorrows of the moment
are but a shallow wound
Deeper love will come with time
Just last until you see it
When life brings hope, the wisdom of years
reveals the folly of our fears


Romantic haste in drama brings
tears and sighs when the hero dies
but the curtain fall is final
when in life we take the tragic way
The sunset too is a glorious thing
but with it ends the day


From The Washington Poems
Copyright © 1985 by C. P. Klapper. All Rights Reserved.