The little lamb that Mary had
Was made of wood and spite;
Enlived by arcane ritual
Upon a stormy night
To school it dogged her every step
She could not leave its presence—
The lamb would Mary not permit
Mundanest evanescence
On Mary's lamb's removal
A supply teacher embarked
And then dropped dead upon the spot
From cardiac infarct
It was her constant shadow
The shepherd of her years
Despite her fear and hatred and
Her cataracts of tears
When Mary stood upon the eve
Of adulthood's condition
She came to understand that this
Was ovine scheme fruition
Her being as collateral
In some dark lambly pact
Her destruction imminent
As payment it enacts
Mary doused herself and house
In floods of kerosene
And struck a match, defiant
As chanting swelled, unseen
The conflagration took it all—
Estate, and girl, and lamb,
And all details of bargains struck
For Unknowns Meant By Man
But on those nights of stormy mien
Upon the moors, they say
Strange lights and sounds are manifest
Upon the ash-laced clay
A phantom lamb the ruins stalks
They say it might appear
A dread reminder to us all:
Baaaad things happened here!
