Classic Poem

I've been, I was saying but yesterday,
To numberless current Broadway shows;
And the curtain falls in many a play
On the baffled hero who says, " God knows! "
" I wonder, " too, is a common close —
It's in " Saint Joan, " which you ought to see —
But this is the line that ebbs and flows;
" Why are you telling all this to me? "

Never an actor who didn't say,
As a man stood up, or a girl arose,
" Won't you ... sit down? " There is never a
Drama that hasn't those well-worn mots.
But here is the line that makes me doze —
I could murder the interrogatee,
And a vertebral shiver down me goes:
" Why are you telling all this to me? "

It's a long, long time since " I'm going away
From here " was spoofed as dramatic pose.
Infrequently now do you hear " But stay! "
Except in reviews and in olios.
But the heroine weeps as she tells her woes
Or the hero spills his catastrophe,
And one to the other this query throws:
" Why are you telling all this to me? "

L'ENVOI

Queen, in the best of your tremolos,
I can hear you pray on your bended knee:
" Why don't you stick to laconic prose?
Why are you telling all this to me? "