Dead Man's Eyes Poem by David Lewis Paget

He was hanging in line with the elder trees
From an oak that had broken the line,
That's why they probably missed him, he
Became as one in design.
He wore a shabby old overcoat
But his hat lay there on the ground,
It wasn't until a jogger who fell
Looked up, that the man was found.

The firemen cut his body down
While the police stood back a pace,
Then loaded him into an ambulance
With a consequent lack of grace.
His eyes were staring, his jaw was slack
And his arms flopped north and south,
But most of all, and what appalled
Was the purple tongue in his mouth.

Nobody seemed to know who he was
His clothing tags had been cut,
There wasn't a wallet or envelope
In the pockets of his old coat.
‘He must be someone, but who knows who?
And why was he hanging there?
Could this have been murder or suicide,
And really, does anyone care? '

He didn't come up on the Missing List,
Nor his face on a Mug Shot file,
No-one was desperately phoning in,
He must have been gone for a while.
‘There's a picture there, on his retina, '
The photographer said at last,
‘If we blow it up, it might give us a clue,
What he saw at his final gasp.'

The rope had been knotted behind his neck
So his head had been angled down,
His eyes had bulged as the blood withdrew
And snapped what he saw on the ground.
A woman was stood there, looking up
With an anguished look on her face,
Her hands together, as if in prayer
But holding a can of Mace.

The police supplied an identikit
And published it over the news,
They passed it around the prison guards
And questioned most of the Screws.
But they didn't mention the woman there
Reflected in each of his eyes,
They kept that piece of forensic back
As their own well kept surprise.

The plain clothes men at the funeral
Were alert, but hid in the trees,
They'd made it known where the man was going
And when, to the cemetery,
So when a woman in black appeared
To watch as the coffin fell,
They swooped, and took her in charge right then
As she cried, ‘I've been in Hell! '

She cried all over the interview,
They thought that her heart would break,
‘I messed right up, ' was her one refrain,
‘It was one great big mistake!
We'd been together, over a year
And I loved him, he was nice,
But then he began to dabble in drugs
And he played about with ice.'

‘I begged and begged, but he wouldn't stop,
And his violent side came out,
He ran amok and he wrecked our home
And he'd start to scream and shout,
I should have gone to the police right then,
Should have had him in rehab,
But I bought the Mace to protect myself,
I know, you must think I'm mad! '

‘Then he'd sober up, see what he'd done
And would be so full of remorse,
I had to forgive him, every time
Just as a matter of course,
Until the day that he knocked me down
And I said, ‘No going back!
I can't put up with this any more, '
Then he took the rope from the shack.'

‘I followed him into the woods out there
And I tried to talk him down,
But he climbed the oak and he tied the rope
And he told me, with a frown,
‘The devil has got me by the throat
And I died when hitting you,
I'll never deserve of your love again
What a terrible thing to do! '

‘Then he jumped, ' she said, and burst the dam
For her tears would never stop,
She went back into the woods again
To plant forget-me-nots,
And I heard she'd died of a broken heart
And was buried where he lies,
But still lives on in that photograph
As seen in a dead man's eyes!

2 January 2015