The cards had been falling badly for
The man that they knew as Jack,
He’d entered through the scullery door
In a faded, stained old Mac,
He didn’t look like he had a buck
Til he reached into his coat,
And pulled a roll of hundreds out
That would choke a Nanny Goat.

They said he could play a hundred down
And a hundred for each raise,
It didn’t appear to faze him then,
He said, ‘Well, loser pays!’
He fooled them all with his poker face
And he bluffed at first to win,
But by the time that the clock struck eight
His roll was getting thin.

When Diamond Jim played a Royal Flush
And took his final note,
Jack stood up and he shook his head
And reached out for his coat,
‘I thought that you’d try to win it back,
You must have more to spare,
I’ll wager it all for what you’ve got
In your pocket, double dare!’

Jack then sat, and his eyes had glowed
As he scowled at Diamond Jim,
Pulled out a tarnished silver coin
And he said, ‘Well let’s begin!’
They eyed the coin on the table-top
Its head like a man with horns,
‘You can’t look now at the tails of it
Til you own it, then it’s yours.’

‘What would you say that coin is worth,
I’ve never seen its like.’
‘There isn’t enough in all the earth
To purchase it, by right,
It must be won in a game of chance
As I won it, long ago,
From a man like a Turkish Sultan that
I met in a travelling show.

Diamond Jim dealt a single hand
And he said, ‘What if I win?’
‘Then you can look at the coin’s reverse
And the chaos will begin!’
‘I think that you’d better show me now
Before we play this hand,
I’m not so sure that I want this coin
With its evil Goats Head Man.

Jack reached out and he tossed the coin
Which spun for a while up there,
As each man suddenly felt the pain
Of a deep and a dark despair,
It took forever to clatter down
And rest on the table top,
The sign of a Spider facing up,
They thought that their hearts would stop.

For up from the coin the spirits came
Of the ones that they’d loved and lost,
And all of them seemed to be in pain
As the wailing came across,
They lurched away from the table, and
They stood and they shook in fear,
‘By God, there’s Marilyn Ampersand
Who drowned in June last year.’

The walls of the room then fell away
They stood on a stony beach,
A woman was drowning out in the surf
But totally out of reach,
And Diamond Jim gave an awful cry
From the depths of his shattered soul,
‘I’d give the world as a ransom, dear,
To bring you back safe, and whole.’

Then Jack had snatched at the tarnished coin
And flipped it up on its head,
The room returned, they were standing there,
‘You can bring her back from the dead!
You only have to possess the coin
Are you willing to play the hand?’
But Jim had wiped at his fevered brow
And shook, he could barely stand.

He took his winnings, all in a roll
And he pushed them back at Jack,
‘Just take your coin and your money too
And leave, don’t ever come back!
I like my world as it is, my friend,
Though grief lies deep in the groin,
But Marilyn won’t be coming back
From the other side of the coin!’

David Lewis Paget