In Competition 2839 you were invited to submit a poem about the darker side of spring. There were references in the entry to Larkin, who could always be relied on to see the bleaker side of things (‘their greenness is a kind of grief’), as well as to Eliot and Thomas Edward Brown. There were also nice echoes of Ogden Nash and Wordsworth.
Nicholas Holbrook and Josephine Boyle were unlucky losers and I liked Ray Kelley’s closing couplet: ‘It’s not by mere coincidence that vernal/ Rhymes so immaculately with infernal.’ The winners, printed below, earn £25 each. Bill Greenwell takes the extra fiver.
At night the young man’s fancy burns
With unrequited lust;
His thighs expand, his stomach churns,
He shudders with disgust —
He hates himself, he hates the scent
Of buds, the songs of birds.
With winter gone, his fast intent’s
Too terrible for words.
In spring, incomprehensible,
He springs up like a weed,
With thoughts beyond defensible
And desperate to breed.
Every Jill and daffodil
Should tremble at his tread:
For he is driven by his will
To trample on their bed.
Bill Greenwell
The distinguished author of ‘The Waste Land’
and ‘Little Gidding’
Called April cruel. He wasn’t kidding.
But it’s not only April that makes me feel like
joining the berserkers.
It’s the whole damn vernal circus,
When normally sane adults behave like Basil
Fotherington-Thomas
As if the world becomes full of promise
At the very first sighting of a snowdrop or a
crocus,
And similar hocus-pocus.
You’ll hear people chorus ‘Ah, the sap is rising!’
Like it’s a miracle. That’s what sap does. Is that
surprising?
Here’s what I believe:
Like vows of love spring flatters to deceive,
A layer of pastoral optimism
Over the abysm.
So don’t ask me to celebrate Primavera.
I’d rather poison pigeons in the park, like Tom
Lehrer.
Basil Ransome-Davies
The robin seeks a worm to kill.
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