How many times these days I say those words,
Muttering them quietly under my breath
Or petulantly as the telephone rings
Or shocked at some reported piece of news
Or simply as a constant formula
For things that pass by daily, and are gone
Into the nowhere that life seems to be
Day after day, as if unceasingly.
Too soft to be an expletive, too repetitive
To have distinction, more sigh than cry of rage,
How many times these days I say those words
And may well say them till the day I die
When everything’s worn out and stiff with age
And I have nothing else to say but ‘Why?’

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