If I agreed with her, every whit,

I'd still be far the worse for it.

I'd hear the all of every matter

And listen to her constant chatter

About the wrongs and perpetrators

And every sinful agitator

Who longs for vengeance upon her brow

Or passed her with a haughty scowl.

It was they who ceased first to speak

While she to them turned the other cheek

And righteously let it, too, be smitten

But ne'er by she have they been bitten!

 

She's borne in silence all these years

The pains of a thousand midnight tears;

But put forced smiles on with the dawn

And bravely, stoically carried on.

Could Job but see her in her sorrow

Naught could make him want to borrow

Pages from her accounting book:

(His own takes on a blessed look).

 

She sighs a deep soul-wrenching moan

And reaches for the telephone.

Out there she knows there still must be

Someone who's smart enough to see

That her viewpoints are edged in gold

And who are dying to be told

All about her sad conditions

And all about her foes' ambitions.

 

She creeps into some hallway corner

And there becomes a mournful mourner.

Now her voice drops to a whisper

If pity lingers in her list'ner,

But if her stand you dare oppose

Then see how quickly her ire grows.

The dying whisper becomes a shout:

Her imminent death is put to rout.

 

Oh, how I wish there was a tonic

To cure my chronic histrionic.

19 January 1984