Beauty treatment

In Competition No. 2392 you were invited to supply a poem in praise of something generally considered ugly.

Chesterton beatified the donkey ‘with monstrous head and sickening cry, And ears like errant wings’ who carried Christ to Jerusalem, and Stephen Spender rhapsodised (as one of you did) about pylons, ‘bare like nude, giant girls that have no secret’. I could not accept a 1930s Murphy radiogram as an icon of ugliness (nostalgists might adore one), nor wasps, which are pesky rather than unbeautiful, but the back end of a bus (especially when you have just missed it) I allowed. The winners are printed below, Paul Griffin taking £30 and the rest £25 each.

Most ladies, like Muffet, are convinced they will snuff it
If a spider comes in their vicinity,
From which they determine a spider is vermin
And damn it from here to infinity.

Myself, I confess it, I frequently bless it,
This outcome of lengthy mutations;
Like Robert the Bruce, I’ve discovered a use
For a creature of purpose and patience.

I bought from a vet and keep as a pet
A specimen large, black, and hairy,
Who is friendly and kind, and daily I find,
Has a number of functions that vary.

With ladies who boss me or wilfully cross me,
He turns their aggression to choking,
While ladies I fancy, like Judy and Nancy,
Throw their arms round my neck, and need stroking.
Paul Griffin

What’s in a name? For you, I fear, too much:
Slug is a word one would not give to such
As fill the eager bosom with delight.
But why? You make your bashful way by night
As though you know your presence might offend
Those gardeners who would bring about your end.
But when by day — too rarely — you are seen,
Your body shimmers with a subtle sheen,
In mottled browns, pale golds and bronzes dressed,
As iridescent as the starling’s breast.
In