Ogden Nash: “Tin Wedding Whistle”

Tin Wedding Whistle

Though you know it anyhow

Listen to me, darling, now.

Proving what I need not prove

How I know I love you, love.

Near and far, near and far,

I am happy where you are;

Likewise I have never larnt

How to be it where you aren’t.

Far and wide, far and wide,

I can walk with you beside;

Furthermore, I tell you what,

I sit and sulk where you are not.

Visitors remark my frown

When you’re upstairs and I am down,

Yes, and I’m afraid I pout

When I’m indoors and you are out;

But how contentedly I view

Any room containing you.

In fact I care not where you be,

Just as long as it’s with me.

In all your absences I glimpse

Fire and flood and trolls and imps.

Is your train a minute slothful?

I goad the stationmaster wrothful.

When with friends to bridge you drive

I never know if you’re alive,

And when you linger late in shops

I long to telephone the cops.

Yet how worth the waiting for,

To see you coming through the door.

Somehow, I can be complacent

Never but with you adjacent.

Near and far, near and far,

I am happy where you are;

Likewise, I have never larnt

How to be it where you aren’t.

Then grudge me not my fond endeavor,

To hold you in my sight forever;

Let none, not even you, disparage

Such valid reason for a marriage.

[My sentiments, exactly, even after forty-three years of sharing life with my husband! Happy Anniversary, Dave.]

Ogden Nash. Good Intentions. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1939