Competition: Epigrammatic

Lucy Vickery presents this week’s Competition

In Competition No. 2690 you were invited to invited to submit quatrains reflecting on current events in the Middle East in the style of Edward FitzGerald/Omar Khayyam.

FitzGerald is, of course, master of the beautifully turned aphoristic phrase. And, as Cedric Watts points out in his introduction to the Wordsworth Classics edition of the Rubaiyat, though he makes it looks effortless the rhyme scheme he uses in his translation — mostly AABA, though occasionally AAAA— is difficult to maintain; especially, as he does so fluently, for stanza after stanza. So the bar was set high. Frank McDonald triumphs this week and bags the bonus fiver. His fellow winners get £25 each.

Awake! For out of desolation’s night
The voice of hope that put the Shah to flight
Is heard across the land where pharaohs ruled,
And liberty decrees:  ‘Let there be light.’

The shifting sands in time’s eternal glass
See princes fall and tyrant pleasures pass;
One force that seemed immovable is gone,
Another rises from the seething mass.

Fate’s moving finger writes and who will say
What good or bad will blossom from today?
Suffice that change has come, and change is hope,
And for an hour let freedom’s children play.

The Nile still flows and floods and Allah keeps
The secrets of tomorrow while man weeps.
The portals through which Rameses has passed
Care not if freedom flourishes or sleeps.
Frank McDonald

‘Tyrant!’ Protesters cry. ‘For long we bore
Your Rule, when you ruled out the Rule of Law.
Robed in Dishonour now you must depart,
And once departed, may return no more.’

From land to land Rebellion spreads apace;
The hated Despot’s drummed out in Disgrace;
And Lo! rejoicing Citizens believe
Another Despot will not take his Place.

Insurgents thrust their Fists into the Sky
And then into the Dust, when Bullets fly.
Although World Leaders damn the Slaughter, they
As impotently move as you or I.