The problem began, as such problems so often do on Hopeless (and indeed, at all points elsewhere, in my experience) with the well-intentioned, but deeply regrettable, act of tidying up.

Saul Washwell, in his capacity as keyholder of the Hopeless, Maine Museum (mentioned in the tale ‘The Postman’), had – with the help of Bartholomew Middlestreet – undertaken to reorganise some of the museum’s dustier corners. One such area in particular, floridly labelled ‘Miscellanea and Misadventure’, seemed to be in dire need of some urgent attention.

This was the sort of activity which, under other circumstances, might have resulted in the reclassification of some dubious Viking artefacts, the rediscovery of the museum’s second-best badger pelt, or perhaps the matching up of two previously unrelated chair legs. On this occasion, however, it led instead to the outbreak of an entirely new and deeply troubling disease.

At the heart of the calamity was a small chest. Plain, sea-warped, and locked with rusted clasps, it bore the unconvincing label:

“Property of Poet and Scholar Shrivensby Pinfarthing — Touch Not, Lest Verse Ensue.”

So naturally, Saul opened it.

The contents were innocuous enough at first glance: a stack of brittle, seaweed-bound manuscripts titled ‘The Ode Cycle of Sea-Borne Sorrows’, an inkwell fossilised to its stand, and a peculiar fungal bloom clinging to every surface like melancholia in spore form. He passed it to Bartholomew for cataloguing. Bartholomew gave it a curious sniff, and promptly began humming in iambic pentameter.

Within twenty-four hours, Saul was drafting instructions to his seven sons in rhymed couplets and Bartholomew was composing a carefully metred suggestion to his wife, Ariadne, concerning the proper stacking of firewood, ending with the line:

“Let logs not lie like lovers in dismay / but stand, erect, in rows both tight and true.”

It was only a matter of time before more victims followed.

At first, they were not alarmed. Reggie Upton, always partial to a bit of Kipling, initially took the infection as a return to form.

 “We marched in fog and clamminess, we bivvied in the bog,
And once I ate the sergeant’s sock, mistaking it for dog…”

This, he claimed, was simply an old regimental marching song, but soon he could not order a drink without invoking the Empire and rhyming “beer” with “cheer” and “fear.”

Neville Moore, in his mausoleum-like home on Ghastly Green, descended into Poe-esque despair, declaring the spoonwalkers to be messengers of death and writing odes to a small shoal of lantern fish that may or may not have existed. He was later found weeping over a dead jellyfish, and quoting stanzas that no one had heard before, or wished to hear again.

Mrs Beaten was discovered crouched behind a hedge, scribbling Larkin-like observations about the declining state of bootlaces, garden statuary, and public morals in the margins of her parish watch notes.

And Norbert Gannicox – poor Norbert, artisan distiller and generally agreeable fellow – was afflicted with the full force of Byron. He was discovered atop of his gin still, shirt unbuttoned, hair in rakish disarray, declaiming to the fog:

 “O cruel gin, thou siren of my sleep,
Thy botanicals too bold, thy spirit deep!
Forlorn I stand, amidst thy copper grave,
And toast the soul thy juniper did save!”

This wasn’t bad, considering that Norbert was, these days, an avowed teetotaller and had previously claimed that gin gave him “visions of disapproving and long-dead aunts.”

At first, some found it entertaining. Then they realised it was contagious, not to say tedious.

Mirielle D’Illay, of Les Demoiselles Dance Studio, became uncharacteristically soft and sighing under the influence of Paul Verlaine, that velvet-draped master of delicate decadence, a poet who wept in vowels and kissed each aching stanza into wilting submission.

Septimus, Mirielle’s long-suffering husband, could only wonder what had happened to the feisty love of his life as she gently whispered lilac-scented verse into her pillow and refused to wear shoes, or speak anything but rhymed French.

Doc Willoughby, always ready to seize an opportunity for self-promotion, began composing and publicly performing in his crowded surgery. The result was McGonagallesque doggerel of such forceful inelegance that some townsfolk took to stuffing mud in their ears for protection.

Philomena, miraculously untouched by the contagion, decided that enough was enough when her husband, Rhys Cranham, began writing love poems to her. Under other circumstances this would have been delightful, but Rhys had adopted the style and tone of the notorious Restoration poet John Wilmott, 2nd Earl of Rochester.

It would have not have been so bad, she reflected wistfully, had her surname not been Bucket.

With a little bit of detective work Philomena managed to trace the source of the infection to the fungal bloom within Shrivensby Pinfarthing’s manuscripts. She tentatively burned one as a precaution, and noticed the nearby Tenzin falter, brusquely cutting Tibetan poet Milarepa off in mid-couplet.

When she later decided to light the fire using the last remaining pages of Sea-Borne Sorrows, Part XIV, the resulting flames sent spores, manuscripts, a small clerihew and a surprised collection of villanelles up in smoke.

The following evening came, and with unaccustomed camaraderie the townsfolk gathered together on the beach, afflicted and strangely united in verse, to perform a final farewell ode at dusk. The mood was sombre. The metre was passable. Mrs Beaten wept discreetly into a lace kerchief and later denied everything.

By then, the spores were burnt out and the last of the rhyme had faded from the air. Silence returned to Hopeless. Awkward, blessed silence.

Only Mirielle continued to write poetry. But only in French. And only on Tuesdays.