For others’ crimes, Joe was remanded,
but begged that his good name be cleared,
and set aside what law demanded.
The judge stood firm, a man revered.
He’d heard this story times unending;
decision made, he wasn’t bending.
They held poor Joe in hard restraints
turned deafened ears to mournful plaints.
Through hallowed halls, his screaming floated,
entreating guards to leave him be,
“I’m innocent. It wasn’t me.”
The prosecution’s lawyer gloated,
a Cheshire grin upon his face,
he’d never learned to win with grace.
The decades dragged and life had passed him,
the years of solitude survived.
He thought where cruel fate had cast him,
and all the things he’d been deprived.
But thoughts like that would dearly cost him,
their only purpose to exhaust him.
He turned his mind down mem’ry lane,
remembered walking in the rain,
each Christmas tree and every present,
the days he thought of what’s ahead,
and science tests his biggest dread,
of how his life had been so pleasant.
There came the day of sweet release,
and his poor soul now rests in peace.
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Author Notes
We first heard of this form when Pantygynt posted one a while back.
Plaint - noun: a cry of sorrow and grief
Onegin stanza, (If just one stanza, it's called the "Pushkin sonnet"), refers to the verse form popularized (or invented) by the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin through his novel in verse Eugene Onegin. The work was mostly written in verses of iambic tetrameter with the rhyme scheme aBaBccDDeFFeGG, where the lowercase letters represent feminine rhymes (stressed on the penultimate syllable, i.e., with an additional unstressed syllable) and the uppercase representing masculine rhymes (stressed on the ultimate syllable, i.e. stressed on the final syllable).
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