We gave our Greek crisis correspondent some time off after getting this dispatch

Greece’s on-again, off-again bailout talks can be maddening for those trying to track the country’s fate. For months, Athens and its creditors have regularly broken apparently unbreakable deadlines, making scant progress in agreeing on new economic reforms in return for desperately needed cash.

This is tricky territory for the news industry. How to keep readers interested in “eleventh hour” negotiations that last for months? Many a tortured metaphor has been deployed, and the well of adjectives is running dry.

Like a neverending episode of Deal or No Deal, it’s enough to make a person go mad. Indeed, it drove this correspondent to poetry.

All the hyperlinked phrases in the verses below come verbatim from Reuters headlines over the past 48 hours. With apologies to poets everywhere, here goes…

Ode on a Grecian economic adjustment program

Patience is wearing thin

At all the endless spin

As the creditors dig in

Especially in Berlin

Call a state of emergency?

To generate more urgency?

And in the meantime

Use Draghi’s lifeline

Lenders have made some big concessions

Greece is stuck in endless recession

But Athens wants to restart talks

Fearing for its banks, bonds, and stocks

If Greece won’t back down

In debt it will drown

On this point there can be no doubt

Finally, time is running out

“Behold! this will be our last attempt,”

Officials say with utter contempt

So if all are keen to bridge the gap

Then why put us through all of this crap?