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Young and innocent maidens beware
Lest spellbound you choose the wrong man,
The birds only sing till the bees start to sting
And he leaves you to carry the can.
Alan Millard
You see the ring of stones on yonder hill?
Notorious the spot is, thronged with ghouls.
Though minus rope, the gibbet stands there still
A monument to times of twisted rules.
They say suspicion, nurtured on belief
In witchcraft, caused a frenzy of revenge.
How often was the wrong man branded thief
And executed in that ancient henge?
Perhaps we’re spellbound still by horror’s scams.
The birds are ravens. Yes, they used to peck
The eyes from human corpses, not just lambs’.
One can imagine Hitchcock here on spec
To catch a thief on camera, just hanged,
Being gnawed for sure by black rats, bloody-
fanged.
G. McIlraith
We’re in divorce mode once again
aloof, like strangers on a train.
It’s more than mere suspicion when
I catch him in flagrante; then
the lady vanishes. Henceforth
the atmosphere’s distinctly north;
by northwest maybe: deadly chill,
no shadow of a doubt. But still
I won’t be too censorious
though Topaz Trump’s notorious.
Why must he choose a champagne tart
of easy virtue? Where’s his heart?
He’ll sabotage the family.
Plot as I may, I can’t get free
from his excuses: words, words, words,
repentance — strictly for the birds!
Alanna Blake
Harry K, I confess, was the lodger,
A flâneur and serious crook,
Notorious man for the ladies
With his cool, young and innocent look.
Rebecca and Marnie, two conquests,
Were besotted, spellbound and in awe;
When both became victims of blackmail,
In a frenzy they turned to the law.
Their astute and well-grounded suspicion
Proved enough to condemn him outright:
The judge handed down a long sentence,
No hope of remission in sight.
That was always the trouble with Harry —
Never knew when to quit and when not;
His morale went progressively downhill,
Now he’s laid in the family plot.
Mike Morrison
The trouble with Harry is no one should marry
A Manxman of easy virtue,
It is, I confess, a notorious guess,
But the birds say that psycho will hurt you.
Ignore my suspicion, it’s not my ambition
To murder or blackmail the lodger,
Or sabotage things when he gives you the ring,
And I know I’m a silly old codger,
But it’s not a torn curtain I’m twitching, I’m
certain
The wrong man is wearing your knickers,
We’re not in the skin game, we don’t drink
champagne,
You’re the farmer’s wife, they’re city slickers.
To catch a thief mauling your wife is appalling,
Tied up in the barn with a rope,
But the cows still want feeding. Rebecca, it’s
bleeding
Bad timing for you to elope!
Greg Whitehead
The shadow of a doubt grows from suspicion,
Through all the thirty-nine steps in between,
To frenzy, murder, and then intermission —
Most often, though, the wrong man’s on the
screen.
The nimble mastermind who drew us here,
Who’d visit terrors on us in the dark,
Stage fright and then direct our rising fear,
Was only in one crowd scene in the park.
Though plots get stale, his cameos seem ageless.
We laugh to see him: passer-by-in-chief,
Who, there amid his intrigues, acts quite blameless.
We laugh, like thieves he’s set to catch a thief.
Frank Osen
No. 2598: L’enfer c’est…
You are invited to provide pithy definitions of hell (as many as you like but a maximum of 150 words). Entries to ‘Competition 2598’ by 28 May or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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