Competition: Eastertide

In Competition No. 2742 you were invited to take as your first line ‘Dear Lord the day of eggs is here…’, which is the opening to Amanda McKittrick Ros’s poem ‘Eastertide’, and continue, in a similarly bad vein, for up to 16 lines.
Described in the Oxford Companion to Irish Literature as ‘uniquely dreadful’, McKittrick Ros, who died in 1939, nonetheless boasted devotees among the literary elite. Aldous Huxley wrote an essay on her extraordinary use of language, highlights of which include ‘globes of glare’ (eyes), ‘bony supports’ (legs) and ‘southern necessary’ (pants). Congratulations, all round. It was a magnificent entry and there are too many honourable mentions to list individually. The winners get £25. Noel Petty nets £30.
 
Dear Lord, the day of eggs is here,
An end to winter’s bitter drear,
When children don their springtime things
And roll their paschal offerings,
The daffodils leap from the mead
And lambkins gambol without heed.
And see! a newcomer appears:
The Easter bunny wags his ears.
 
We must not, though, too lightly say
That Easter is for holiday.
We know, dear Lord, that Eastertide
For You once had its sadder side,
But often, if one keeps good cheer
Things aren’t so bad as they appear,
And lo! just when You were most stressed,
Everything turned out for the best.
Noel Petty

Dear Lord, the day of eggs is here at last,
Refulgent outcome of a sombre past,
Of histories transgressed by woeful war,
Of internecine incidents galore.
Whose knuckles brandished at Gethsemane
The sword of treason or in Germany
Provoked a costive, schismatising friar
To spurn the Church and dub the Pope a liar?
Was it the doubly horned Antagonist,
To whose dark mills dissension is such grist?
Alas, when true believers fight they sin
And this is where the holy eggs come in,
Whose yolk and albumen emulsify
The disputation vile that makes me sigh.
We value their transcendence, as we should,
And e’en the chocolate ones are rather good.