In Competition No. 2439 you were invited to write a poem in praise of a friend.
The only time I wrote a poem in praise of a friend, he shortly afterwards committed murder, followed by suicide. There are, though, much happier examples. Pope’s ‘On a Certain Lady at Court’ ends:
‘Has she no faults then,’ Envy says, ‘Sir?’
Yes, she has one, I must aver;
When all the World conspires to praise her,
The Woman’s deaf, and does not hear.
The compliment is spiced by the fact that she actually was deaf. I also like Day Lewis’s poem ‘For Rex Warner on his 60th Birthday’, which contains the shrewd line, ‘“Keeping up” a friendship means it is through.’ It was a pleasant change to set a ‘joking apart’ comp which couldn’t possibly embrace political satire. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and D.A. Prince takes the bonus fiver.
In our last issue the number of the competition set was misprinted as 2443. It should have been 2441.
Through school bus, classroom, playground, we’d a stack
Of shared experience – we go ‘way back’
(In the vernacular), so now we spend
Hours in dissection of each absent friend.
Death, disagreements, half a world away –
Nothing protects them as you have your say
In honest, rude, robustly common sense
Slicing through affectation and pretence –
A lifetime spent on sharpening your wit
Means that you’re unsurpassed, detecting shit.
Of course it’s death we’re picking over most
In contemplation of our own Last Post.
It’s death-bed scenes, not weddings now, for us;
We trump each other’s stories, and discuss
Whether the one who goes the sooner shall
Feel left out at the other’s funeral.
D.A. Prince
Dear friend, though we have never met
Or spoken face to face,
The user-friendly internet
Shrinks intervening space.
Though you may dwell in Oxfordshire
And I by dull canals
Not twenty miles from Wigan pier,
We’re virtually old pals.
Our modems chatter like a pair
Of neighbours at a gate
To share a joke, or rubbish Blair,
Or simply ventilate.
I welcome like a punctual train
Such serendipity.
For elevating the mundane
I thank you, chère amie.
G.M. Davis
Provincial freedman’s son, in civil war
He joined the losing side and tasted rout,
But by the time he died he was a star,
Greeted by strangers when he walked about.
He made friends easily (including me).
He hated show without exalting thrift,
And stood for comfortable sufficiency.
Contentment was his watchword and his gift.
The springtime moved him, but he never read
Wordsworth, and worked an earlier tradition;
To him it augured time’s relentless tread,
Mortality, impending inanition.
He loved a joke, and often at his own
Expense; he loved good fellowship in Bacchus.
His lyric monument still stands alone.
Poet and friend, thank you, Horatius Flaccus.
Colin Sydenham
I seldom say how much your visit matters,
An unexpected call, your well-loved face
Expectant beyond the door; your patient letters
Taking me through our past. Can one replace
A lifetime’s closeness? Others come and go
With pleasing words and witty conversations,
Earning a day’s delight, but you are no
Passer-by. Through age’s alterations
Our friendship has remained. Sometimes we seem
Bonded in silence, speech superfluous;
Sometimes we chat, recalling a common dream
Of a world that long ago belonged to us.
In illness we hold the other’s trembling hand,
For warmth can cure where doctors work in vain.
Such ties as ours all lovers understand;
They soothe our grief, and mollify our pain.
Frank Mc Donald
My dearest Bill, your practised skill
At lightsome verse and prose
Ignites with such a witty touch
Whatever you compose.
I call you friend, though each weekend
Our friendship’s put to proof,
Our armoury the jeu d’esprit,
The pastiche and the spoof.
Your comic flair makes you the heir
Of Carroll, Wodehouse, Lear;
My muse is bound to Gothic ground,
Where Poe was pioneer.
Amazingly, you once called me
‘Il miglior fabbro’ –
A flattering trope, but still I hope
You’ll miss me when I go.
Basil Ransome-Davies
You do not spare your feelings, much
To my delight: and you admit
A loyal fool like me. You touch
On everything, as you see fit –
And so our conversations thrive
On honest ground, on talking straight.
You’ll contradict, will not connive
In silences. You love, you hate
Considerately, and do not scorn
The world. You always have a cause
For weeping or for laughter, fawn
On no one. And you loathe applause,
Unless well-earned. So here’s a cheer
For you, the way a river’s eddy
Catches your eye, the way you clear
My head. Let’s stay unsteady, steady.
Bill Greenwell
No. 2442: Bouts rimésYou are invited to offer a poem with the following rhyme-words in this order: crown, brown, post, boast, promotion, notion, share, there, day, say, hat, that, throat, note, brim, him. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2442’ by 4 May.
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