THE SIN

He kept to the shadows

And walked across the meadows

Head bent, belly spent

Down the barn past the taunting primrose.

 

They say he’s a blackguard

And that, all must be on guard!

In the valley and the gully

For he’s sure to slice us without regard!

 

It seems, he took the life

In fishy circumstances, of his wife

She’d pleaded ‘n’ even conceded

In the end nothing got her off the strife.

 

‘He’s crazed,’ they wail

‘Can’t be trusted’; ‘He should be in jail,’

None dare argue on this issue,

They brand him ‘no good’ and there’s none to bail.

 

My neighbour says it isn’t fair

For the man couldn’t hurt a hare

‘It’s a frame up they’d set up’

Now he’s hunted ‘n’ his kin is in despair.

 

They promptly sit on judgement

On others’ pathetic predicament

‘A sacrilege!’ they cry and ‘the man has to pay!’

And then walk off for a nefarious commitment.

 

In the dark, silhouette foreplay

The phantoms grin malicious and gay

Their eyes glow red like an eagle’s beak in blood

While he sits concealed hoping for another day.

 

Another fine day

It never came, they say

They led him to the gallows across the meadows

Alas! Dead and stiff, in silence he lay.

 

* * * * * * * * * *

 

A sin it became, the justice a bloody game!

For they found him without an ounce of blame!

Alas! He was dead and gone

They who accused him lay in shame!

They soon came under a curse

A curse they couldn’t tame and was quite terse, 

Their family broke up; their kids turned perverse

And they repented in shame, but couldn't unmake the curse.

In ten years the cursed town disappeared

It took them all; even the onlookers were not spared.

A lone rickety chair perched surrounded in bushes,

The one that the man sat on, doomed to death!