Suspicion

We make assumptions:
Cary Grant — lazy and selfish
man-child or manipulative murderer?

We’re swayed this way and that
by a manipulative film director.
What do we know that we’re not made to know?

As innocent as Joan Fontaine,
we judge according to confused desires,
to what we’re led to think

from clues scattered deliberately
like broken headstones,
the letters half-obliterated,

from strengths or defects in our character
and reasoning, from standpoints
as subjective as painterly perspectives.

We don’t need the corpse,
for it’s already there —
rotting in our imaginations.

Suspicion is a 1941 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock.