Competition: Two bridges

In Competition No. 2723 you were invited to supply an updated version of Wordsworth’s ‘Upon Westminster Bridge’.

A reading of the sonnet on Westminster Bridge in September 2002, to commemorate its 200th anniversary, was all but drowned out by the roar of the rush hour. A far cry, then, from Wordsworth’s view of a slumbering city, ‘silent, bare’, dominated by St Paul’s, with fields to the south. It was described thus in a diary entry by the poet’s sister: ‘The houses were not overhung by their cloud of smoke & they were spread out endlessly, yet the sun shone so brightly with such a pure light that there was even something like the purity of one of nature’s own grand Spectacles.’

The list of unlucky losers is long: John Beaton, Mike Morrison, Josephine Boyle,  Dominica Roberts, Jane Dards and Roger Theobald narrowly missed out. W.J. Webster takes the bonus fiver while his fellow winners are rewarded with £25 each.

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Ahead that fairground Ferris wheel, the Eye,
Flash relic of the dull Millennium bash;
Defiant in its size, unlovely, brash,
Bowed version of those blocks that prod the sky.
Back here, a clock tower and a ‘palace’ lie,
Where Wordsworth’s vision had long turned to
    ash:
A madly mediaevalist mish-mash,
Cold-moulded from a visi-Gothic die.
Between the olde and new the Thames still flows,
As settled in its course as in its name,
But little on or by it now, God knows,
To that astonished gaze would look the same.
But what has gone — as all that’s transient goes —
We still can picture in the sonnet’s frame.
W.J. Webster

This sight I fear is less fair than it was:
Packed pavements, crush and rush and push and
     shove,
Crowds spilling from the kerb; while up above
On constant watch police helicopters buzz,
Sly, prying, spying sky-eyes looking down
Upon the London Eye bedecked with pods
That swallow queues and lift them to the gods
To catch a bird’s eye view of London town;
Below the tourist cruise boats ply and probe
The choppy waters — skipper at the wheel,
Loudspeakers spluttering out their muffled spiel
On city sights — the Wobbly Bridge, the Globe;
Behind me endless traffic roars and beeps
Beneath a darkening sky as dusk ignites
A riotous blaze of blinding, dazzling lights,
Dear God, why is it London never sleeps!
Alan Millard

William, if you were living in our time
You’d see huge boats unlike the boats of yore,
Moving without the aid of sail or oar;
Though whether you would celebrate in rhyme
The scene before you must remain in doubt;
And while you gazed on roof and tower and steeple
At any time of day you would see people,
Just loitering or hurrying about;
And looking up see curious vessels there
Which fly above the domes on Tower Hill.