Theft on the 15:33 to Penzance

Here’s cause to complain,

I was robbed on a train

near Salisbury Plain!

After flushing the chain

I returned to my table

where an Auntie Mabel

in moth-eaten lace

with heart-monitor face

was parked in my place,

and my paperback, floppy,

library-lent copy

of poems (some soppy)

by Cowper, had vanished!

I’d only been banished

by a moment’s relieving.

My mind was heaving

with stumped disbelieving,

for who would go thieving

ballads and sonnets

as though they were wallets

from a man in a shirt

with the Sex Pistols on it?

I tried to exert

some logic in spurts

as I scratched my mohican:

Who’d have the cheek and

desire to abduct

the wordsmithery struck

by obscure old Will-

iam Cowper’s quill?

The train guard took

a cursory look

in her bag, but she might,

the conniving crook,

with no huge dexterous fight,

have ensconced my poor book

in some out-of-bounds nook,

some wizened old cranny.

I concluded with canny

reflection, this granny

who pinches rhymes

from bygone times,

this most heinous of crimes,

I was definite,

was really T.S. Eliot

disguised as an old bat

in a frilly hat.