Dear Mary | 12 April 2008

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.