Gjertrud Schnackenberg - Love Letter lyrics

Dear love, though I am a hopeless correspondent, I found your letter habits lacking too Till I received your card from H.-lulu. It made me more-than-slightly-less despondent To see how you transformed your ocean swim Among dumb bubble-blowers into meters And daffy rhymes about exotic tweeters Beyond your balcony at 2 a.m. I went to bed when you went to Hawaii, And shut my eyes so tightly I saw stars, And clenched my sheets like wadded-up memoirs And made some noise like wah-wah-wah, i.e., I find your absence grimly problematic. The days stack up like empty cardboard boxes In ever-higher towers of cardboard Swaying in senseless-lost-time's spooky attic. I'll give the -atic rhyme another try. To misconstrue the point-of-view Socratic, Life is a painful stammered-out emphatic Pronunciation of the word Goodbye. Or, as it came out on the telephone, Sooner-the-better is the way I see it: Just say, "I guess not"; I'll reply, "So be it." Beloved, if you throw this dog a bone, To readopt the stray-dog metaphor, I'll keep my vigil till the cows come home. You'll hear me howling over there in Rome. I have no explanations, furthermore-- But let me say I've had it up to here With scrutinizing the inscrutable; The whys and how-comes of immutable Unhesitating pa**ion are unclear-- I don't love you because you're good at rhymes, And not because I think you're not-so-dumb, I don't love you because you make me come And come and come innumerable times, And not for your romantic overcoats, And not because our friends all say I should, And not because we wouldn't or we would Be or not be at one another's throats, And not because your accent thrills my ear-- Last night you said not "sever" but "severe," But then "severe" describes the act "to sever"-- I love you for no reason whatsoever. And that's the worst, as William S. the Bard Wrote out in black-and-white while cold-and-hot: Reasons can be removed, but love cannot. The comic view insists: Don't take it hard, But every day I'm pacing up and down The hallway till I drive my neighbors mad, And evenings come with what-cannot-be-had As lights blink on around this boring town, Whence I unplug the phone and draw the shade And drink myself half-blind and fantasize That we're between the sheets, your brilliant eyes Open me and, bang, we have it made-- When in reality I sit alone And, staring at my hands, I think "I think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink" While hating everything I've always known About how you and I are sunk as well. Under the aspect of eternity The world has already ended anyway. And, without you, my life can go to hell On roller skates, as far as I'm concerned. Two things are clear: these quatrains should be burned, And love is awful, but it leads us to Our places in the human comedy, Frescoes of which abound in Italy. And though I won't be sitting next to you, I'll take my seat with minimal complaints. May you sit in the company of saints And intellectuals and fabulous beauties, And not forget this constant love of Trude's.