He crashed on into our dining room
Like a man convulsed with pain,
And breathless, gasped as he tried to ask,
‘What have you done with Jane?’
I stood En Guarde by the mantelpiece
And clutched at a kitchen knife,
‘Who are you, and what do you want?
You’re talking about my wife!’
He leant exhausted against the wall
And groaned, like a man obsessed,
I thought he could have escaped somewhere
That he might have been possessed.
‘I can’t believe she’s done it again,
She’s going against the plan,
I’ve told her time, and time out of time
To wait for her rightful man.’
‘See here,’ I said, with a touch of fear,
‘She’s mine, with never a doubt,
We married a couple of years ago
So I think I’ll show you out.’
‘I have to stay ‘til I see her face
She’ll remember when I do,
If you can’t stand up to the challenge, then
She never should be with you.’
He’d hit a nerve, and he knew he had
For I’d never been too sure,
For Jane had always been hesitant
When I’d asked for her hand before.
I thought there might have been someone else
Lurking behind her fan,
A former lover, she’d have no other
Now here was this crazy man!
I sat him down in an easy chair
And gave him a shot of Beam,
Then took a double shot for myself,
And stared at him, in a dream.
I tried to imagine her with him
And it shook me, without doubt,
For I could tell that they’d couple well,
Then wished that I’d thrown him out.
Jane came back home from her shopping spree,
Came in through the broken door,
And stood aghast at the pile of glass
He’d smashed there, down on the floor.
The stranger stood, he jumped to his feet
And held out a shaking hand,
‘I thought I saw you out in the street,
Don’t you know me, I’m your man!’
She held her nerve and she looked at him
As a stranger, far away,
‘I seem to recall,’ she muttered, ‘but…
‘All that was another day.’
‘Another day in a another time,
The fifth, but never the last,’
He looked at her with his pleading eyes,
Please try to remember the past.’
Then Jane went white as a cotton sheet
And said, ‘You couldn’t be Paul!
I left you last in the marketplace,
Leaning againt a wall.’
‘The soldiers came, and took us away,’
He said with the slightest tear,
‘They took us behind a barn that day…’
I said, ‘What’s going on here?’
It was suddenly like I’d disappeared
There were only two in that room,
Their eyes were locked in an act of grace
That I couldn’t share in the gloom.
‘Of course, it’s coming on back to me,
The bed in that cheap hotel,’
She seemed to blush as her eyes cast down,
And my heart had stopped, as well.
‘I’ve had just all I’m about to take,’
I said, ‘I want you to go!
And Jane, just tell me for heaven’s sake
You continue to love me so.’
The man stood up and he shook her hand
And he said, ‘That’s really an art.
I didn’t think you could act, my dear,
I was wrong, you get the Part!’
David Lewis Paget
