In Competition No. 2539 you were invited to submit a problem in verse form to The Spectator’s agony aunt in the style of a poet of your choice.
The assignment was inspired by James Michie’s poem ‘Dear Mary’, which appears in his superb posthumously published collection Last Poems and which brims with wit and humanity, as did the man himself.
Honourable mentions to Mae Scanlan, Ray Kelley and G.M. Davis for enjoyable Ogden Nash pastiche; to Mrs E. Emerk for an entertaining reworking of Robert Frost’s ‘Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’; and to Philip Wilkinson for his take on Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’ written from the point of view of the mistress herself. I also liked Mike Morrison’s plea, Emily Dickinson-style: ‘This hapless Hyphenation –/ Must be Badness – in the Blood –/ Without your Wisdom – Mary –/ I am but lost – for Good.’ The winners, printed below, get £25 apiece. The extra fiver goes to Noel Petty.
Mary, out here I am the low’st of life,
A drudge, a slave — in short, a Vicar’s wife.
He preaches on their piety and morals
While I patch up their breeches and their quarrels.
When in the pulpit he like Phoebus rises,
His female flock pant through their fond disguises,
And when in summer at the village fête
They are enjoined to ‘Guess the Vicar’s Weight’
O then observe what febrile fumblings follow
As they pay homage to their chos’n Apollo.
They touch and pat and feel in lust and hope,
They stroke — nay, not to bandy words, they grope.
But worse, when treated to such sad employment,
Apollo squeals in manifest enjoyment.
Pray, Mary, can you help to hatch a plot
To foil his flock and ditch his chariot?
Noel Petty/Alexander Pope
Sweet Mary, aid us if you can,
Ay, if you can,
There toils with us a kindly man,
Betwinkle-eyed and meek,
A soul to others’ needs alert,
One never mean nor cruel nor curt,
Yet none durst mention, lest it hurt,
How rank his trainers reek.
We’ve pondered much, full many a day,
Full many a day,
In search of gentle words to say
How odiously they stink.
But faltering forward, seeking still,
Intent on causing no one ill,
Words spring not forth. So, should you will,
Say, Mary, what you think.
Alan Millard/Thomas Hardy
Should I consult thee as I would the Sphinx?
Thy wisdom comes out candid and more clear:
That oracle delights in nods and winks,
And she in Delphi’s even more obscure.
But thou, dear Aunt, can ever empathise
With knotty problems of the human kind.
Thou knowst our frailty, thou art worldly wise,
So pray advise me, if thou dost not mind.
My paramour of twenty years has changed,
Stays out with mates and comes home two thirds
pissed,
Then sets about me as would one deranged,
Assaulting me with bottle, foot and fist.
This creature who expects to share my bed
Is surely not the women that I wed!
Michael Saxby/William Shakespeare
Dear Mary, I’ve Jolliphants coming to dinner,
Coming here from the Submafune lands,
And I fear they’ll eat ’til they’re twelve stone
thinner
And bring their own oompah band.
Dear Mary, it’s said they will not sit to table
But require a full coroner’s court,
With a palsied old cormorant swaddled in sable
But Mary, I must know your thoughts!
Dear Mary, I hear that they eat with their elbows
Dining only on pig-iron and chives,
And gorge themselves blue ’til a gopher wood bell
goes
At which they abscond with the knives.
Dear Mary, they agreed to dine at eight-thirty
But the clock just chimed January next,
My fried eggs are hatched and the crocks are all
dirty,
Do I not have the right to feel vexed?
Adrian Fry/Edward Lear
Dear Mary, as I witness
The postman on his round,
My mind turns to the grave-earth
That lingers underground.
The corpses in the churchyard
Are no more dead than I
To everlasting mercy
Or this young postman’s eye.
Why should I not invite him
To share a glass of port?
Cruel world, where honest feeling
Breeds foul, censorious thought.
Ah, sentiment is chary
And eager souls think twice
When love’s a crime. Dear Mary,
How can I break the ice?
Basil Ransome-Davies/A.E. Housman
Mary, you must be less busy:
Let your lamb go wandering freely,
Careless of its fleece’s whiteness.
Cease to call the cattle homewards;
They can cross the sands without you.
Be contrary, leave your garden
With its silver bells a-ringing
And its pretty maids and so on.
Be the Mary that we value
At the end of the Spectator.
Answer me this vital question,
Born of simple desperation:
When I broach a pot of yogurt,
How can I survive unspattered?
Paul Griffin/Longfellow
No. 2542: Giving up the ghost
You are invited to submit a ghost story entitled ‘The Face of the Horse’ (150 words). Entries to ‘Competition 2542’ by 24 April or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
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