I Read Therefore I Am discussion

Send for Lord Timothy

The Squire is in his library. He is rather worried.

Lady Constance has been found stabbed in the locked Blue Room, clutching in her hand

A fragment of an Egyptian papyrus. His degenerate half-brother

Is on his way back from New South Wales.

And what was the butler, Glubb,

Doing in the neolithic stone-circle

Up there on the hill, known to the local rustics

From time immemorial as the Nine Lillywhite Boys?

The Vicar is curiously learned

In Renaissance toxicology. A greenish Hottentot,

Armed with a knobkerry, is concealed in the laurel bushes.



Mother Mary Tiresias is in her parlour.

She is rather worried. Sister Mary Josephus

Has been found suffocated in the scriptorium,

Clutching in her hand a somewhat unspeakable

Central American fetish. Why was the little novice,

Sister Agnew, suddenly struck speechless

Walking in the herbarium? The chaplain, Fr O'Goose

Is almost too profoundly read

In the darker aspects of fourth-century neo-Platonism.

An Eskimo, armed with a harpoon

Is lurking in the organ loft.



The Warden of St Phenol's is in his study.

He is rather worried. Professor Ostracoderm

Has been found strangled on one of the Gothic turrets,

Clutching in his hand a patchouli-scented

Lady's chiffon handkerchief.

The brilliant under-graduate they unjustly sent down

Has transmitted an obscure message in Greek elegiacs

All the way from Tashkent. Whom was the Domestic Bursar

Planning to meet in that evil smelling

Riverside tavern? Why was the Senior Fellow,

Old Doctor Mousebracket, locked in among the incunabula?

An aboriginal Philipino pygmy,

Armed with a blow-pipe and poisoned darts, is hiding behind the statue of Pallas Athene.

Sens for Lord Timothy

A dark cloud of suspicion broods over all. But even now

Lord Timothy Pratincole (the chinless wonder

With a brain like Leonardo's) or Chief Inspector Palefox

(Although a policeman, patently a gentleman,

And with a First in Greats) or that eccentric scholar,

Monsignor Monstrance, alights from the chuffing train,

Has booked a room at the local hostelry

(The Dragon of Wantley) and is chatting up Mine Host,

Entirely democratically, noting down

Local rumours and folk-lore.



Now read on. The murderer will be unmasked,

The cloud of guilt dispersed, the church clock stuck at three,

And the year always

Nineteen twenty or thirty something,

Honey for tea, and nothing

Will ever really happen again.



John Heath-Stubbs

Poem of the day will return on July 1st

Please feel free to post any poems of your choice in the meantime :0)

Ha ha this poem is brilliant - Love all that old-fashioned murder mystery/sleuth stuff but it can be over the top lol!