The Private Eye: A Detective Story

The laundry man fermented in his bed, 
Indifferent to complaints about the towels 
And undershirts: he had been three days dead, 
Creatures had come to forage in his bowels. 
  Tell the tale over truly, whoever can, 
  Of the unnatural passing of the laundry man. 

Out of the temples of the Abstract Law 
Cops and photographers removed in legion 
To butter their bread with the unhappy gore 
Coagulating in this mortal region. 
  They pluck their daily bread out of such death. 
  All, all is vanity, the preacher saith. 

But O the Private Eye, the Private Eye 
Has not descended to us from sublime 
And legal heights, nor risen from the sty 
Wherein the pig-men go waddling in crime: 
  Modern Ulysses who, in the keen feud 
  Of gods and mortals, is known to both as shrewd.

Monstrous guilt has shrunken into clues 
As thin as hair, unstable as an ash, 
And unobtrusive as lovers' rendezvous 
Or the slight rise of pimples in a rash. 
  And the unskilled in crime will let it pass 
  As a praying mantis is taken to be grass. 

Though motives be as tortuous as lace 
The Private Eye shall make them as a string, 
Single and tightly drawn about the case; 
Let him unravel this much-ravelled thing. 
  Witness with what dexterity he charts 
  The bloody issue of our bloody hearts. 

He holds allegiance only to that truth 
Sustained by brazen stares, and called empirical; 
Therefore he laughs at sinners and crooks uncouth 
Who fancy to be saved by sudden miracle. 
  Sooner or later all of them shall die 
  By the steel logic of the Private Eye. 

But chiefly numbered is that little blonde 
With round capacities to please the eye, 
Of which the laundry man was very fond 
Until she filled his dinner up with lye. 
  Dangling facts shall hang about her name, 
  And her flesh shall shake upon its calcium frame. 

But the Private Eye reclines in isolation 
As though in quarantine against a plague, 
And to inspire his earthy meditation, 
Drinks the elixir of the Brothers Haig: 
  Knowing what it is possible to know, 
  That the grass is dry, the wind continues to blow.