And another thing | 2 October 2014

In Competition No. 2867 you were invited to add a final stanza to a well-known poem.

Nicholas Stone imagined how Coleridge might have continued had it not been for the intrusion of the Person of Porlock. Tracy Davidson’s coda to ‘The Owl and the Pussycat’ painted a picture of interspecies conjugal bliss turned sour. And Penn Harvey added a final instalment to Wallace Stevens’s chilly modernist masterpiece ‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’.

There were strong performances all round this week and it was difficult to whittle down the entry. Bill Greenwell, Katie Mallett, Alanna Blake, Mike Morrison and Brian Murdoch were pipped to the post, but only just, by the prizewinners below, who are rewarded with £15 each. Chris O’Carroll takes the bonus fiver.

The Queen had
A word with
The King’s
‘I fear my husband’s over fond
Of dairy foods,’ she said.
‘Butter can be
Dangerous,’
The doctor warned
Her Majesty.
‘If Royal arteries get clogged,
The King could wake up dead.’
Chris O’Carroll/‘The King’s Breakfast’

If you can celebrate the state of ifness
In hortatory verses by the yard,
Your upper lip emphatic in the stiffness
Most proper to a very British bard,
If you can master every sticky wicket
And triumph after falling on your arse,
Then you will find that you are just the ticket
To be a hero of the middle class.
John Whitworth/‘If’

But if, despite all this, you come a cropper —
 Fall face down in the mud and can’t get up;
If being macho’s scary or improper,
 If stiffened upper lips are not your cup;
Then hug a tree, or paint your nails; whatever.
 You’ll find some newer way of getting by.
Lift high your head: we’re all in this together —
 Remember, it’s OK for men to cry.
D.A. Prince/‘If’

So far it’s only freeze or burn,
But maybe not.
As time goes by we live and learn
To see the sum of things, and spurn
A simple choice of cold or hot.