Concrete poem

In Competition No. 2873 you were invited to submit a poem in praise or dispraise of a well-known building.

It was a strong entry this week and Alanna Blake, Philip Roe, Basil Ransome-Davies and W.J. Webster were unlucky losers. Frank McDonald took me at my word and submitted an actual concrete poem, which made it into the winning line-up. His fellow victors take £25 each and this week’s bonus fiver goes to Brian Allgar for a double dactyl that would have pleased Guy de Maupassant. Maupassant hated the Eiffel Tower — ‘this tall, skinny pyramid of iron ladders, this giant and disgraceful skeleton’ — so much that he often sought refuge from it by eating lunch in its restaurant, the only place he couldn’t see it from.

Gallical-phallical;
Eiffel erected a
Skyful of girders that’s
French as a bean.
 
Typical architect’s
Megalomania
Boastful, priapic, and
Rather obscene.
 
Tourist or resident,
If you’re like me, and you
Can’t stand the sight of this
Clunky machine,
 
Climb to the top — it’s the
One place in Paris where
Eiffel’s monstrosity
Cannot be seen.
Brian Allgar
 
I met a chap the other night
Who wore his vest outside his shirt;
I met his sister. She was tight.
She wore her drawers outside her skirt.
 
And they reminded me of you,
Your strange, external service pipes,
Your architecture all askew —
So, one of the bohemian types,
 
Was it, conjured your design? How dull!
One of nature’s foolish bodgers,
Who wore his brains outside his skull?
I should have known it. Richard Rogers.
 
Your Quadro-tubes, from blue to red,
Would make a toddler flush with pride:
They hide a cuboid, drab and dead.
Don’t start me on the art inside.
Bill Greenwell
 
An armadillo without arms or legs;
A rugby ball too tall and much too wide;
In part thou art a goose’s golden egg
Except with folk not yolk on your inside.
Thou hast been slated in so many ways;
Thou hast been rated great but also not;
The poem on your front lights up our days
But oh! That crazy, curvy shape thou’st got.