People who indulge in tittle-tattle and rumour
put me in a bad humour.
Without wishing to be unduly formal
I can state that as a rule reality is pretty normal,
which I suppose explains the fun to be had
by folk who reckon they can add
two and two, but almost invariably make it more
than what it should be, viz., i.e., or to wit, four.
Call me cynical,
but too many people's approach to the truth is far from clinical.
So it no longer gives me any surprise to
know the conjectures that the simplest remark can give rise to.
A ****** of overheard conversation
in all likelihood has a very mundane explanation,
on account of (as I said before) reality
for most of us being of a mind-numbing banality.
The interest that rumour-mongers can find,
in the further imaginative reaches of the mind,
however, is considerably higher.
But then they have the effrontery to attempt to justify
their outrageous speculations by claiming that there's
no smoke without fire,
"The breathless jumble of words would not be so funny if we did not hear in the background the tetrameter or pentameter line that our poetry-attuned ears have been trained on and that Nash is writing against." (Billy Collins)