Competition | 11 June 2011

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition

In Competition No. 2699 you were invited to submit an ‘Ode to an Expiring Frog’ or to any other creature that is not long for this world.

Inspiration here comes of course from the magnificent Mrs Leo Hunter, embodiment of provincial literary pretension and authoress of this poignant piece:
Can I view thee panting, lying
On thy stomach, without sighing;
Can I unmoved see thee dying
On a log
Expiring frog!
Adrian Fry’s McGonagall pastiche entertained, as did Ray Kelley, J. Garth Taylor, Shirley Curran and Martin Parker. All in all, it was  an impressive entry. ‘Finely expressed,’ as Mr Pickwick might say.
The winners, printed below, get £25 each, except Bill Greenwell, who nabs £30.

Watching you, will I inhibit
Your passage to the Great Beyond
Towards the Happy Hunting Pond
Or interrupt your final ribbit?
Disrupt this agonising soak
Between the weeds, beside the slime
Now that the world is calling time,
When you are just about to croak?

Here in this primordial slop
Do you look back in peace and pride
At your unchecked insecticide?
Though caught here on your final hop,
You pleased me when in gelid spawn,
With tadpole tricks in jars at school.
Though sinking in this drooling pool,
I’ll miss you, pop-eye, every dawn.
Bill Greenwell

Oh hideous crunch! Oh sad and sorry sight!
Oh wretched creature writhing in distress
Whose slow, meandering journey through the
night
Draws to its close in this unholy mess!
Alas, because of one blind step amiss
No further will you travel, faithful friend,
No longer wander in molluscan bliss,
For here is where your silver trail must end.
Oh sullied sole that crushed your fragile shell!
Oh foul foot that leaves you oozing slime!
Forgive my careless tread, and fare you well
On this, your final, sweet, celestial climb
To join the hosts of those who’ve gone before,
The ghosts of shattered gastropods who meet,
Re-armoured under shells that break no more,
On heavenly snails’ trails free from feckless feet.