In Competition No. 2426 you were invited to supply a poetic invitation from one friend to another to come and stay in the country and enjoy its pleasures.
The title was meant to suggest that I was looking for a charming, straight-faced piece such as Horace or our 17th-century poets might have written, but most of you refused to throw away the jester’s cap and bells. ‘Come to Devon soon. But hurry./ Now’s the season we spread slurry,’ warbled Martin Parking, while Mark Ambrose offered rural entertainment of a most unusual sort: ‘There is also bell-ringing if you are still keen./ We ring in the nude: it’s a sight to be seen.’ The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and G.M. Davis has the bonus fiver.
Dear city friend, you spend your week
Attending exhibitions
Or shopping at a smart boutique
For further acquisitions
Or dining where the ultra-chic
Obey their dietitians,
But still the urban pavements reek
Of ordure and emissions.
In Cumbria the weather’s bleak,
A force of pure attrition.
At any time the sky may leak
Its drenching ammunition,
While coastal winds obscenely shriek
Like souls tagged for perdition.
But if it’s peace of mind you seek,
Here is its definition.
G.M. Davis
Come down from Babel Towers, old polyglot,
And in our gentle country air take stock:
Time here is changing colours, not
The flicking digits on a clock.
Few sounds you’ll find much louder than a thought:
Bird calls, perhaps, a distant barking dog,
The hissing where the sap is caught
Inside a blazing crimson log.
Our food will not have travelled long and far,
Will not be graded, dated, plastic-wrapped,
Not chilled, but fresh or from a jar
Where something of the summer’s trapped.
And when — as yes, of course, we know you must —
You feel again the need of rush and noise,
This counterweight should help adjust
The centre of your equipoise.
W.J. Webster
Come, friend, leave London for a little while
And let the country match every delight!
Nothing you had in town shall be removed,
But merely altered. Thus you shall not miss
The lively nightlife. Here it comes from owls
And badgers. True, we have our cocktail hour
At dawn — he shakes it as he crows for day —
But then you’ll find the underground is just
As full, with rabbits, foxes, shrews and moles.
Nor will you miss the bars — there’s five on all
The gates. And as for access to the web,
Well, every spider networks all the time.
We have our stocks and shares: shares plough, stocks breed,
And maybe you can even find out how
To get a natural latte — from the cow.
Brian Murdoch
Do come in January! Here
We’re snowbound almost every year:
With open fires it’s splendid.
The roof is nearly mended.
Our mediaeval barn’s so sweet,
With rural solitude complete.
Each week the handy bus
Runs just four miles from us.
An oil lamp in the living-room
Goes some way to dispel the gloom.
While candles lit at night
Provide your bedtime light.
No main supplies, of course: you stand
And pump all water up by hand.
The pigs live rather near,
So bring your wellies, dear.
Godfrey Bullard
Dear Virgil, now you’re safely back from Greece
Don’t linger in the greed and heat of Rome,
Pick up some Caecuban and come straight to
My Sabine home.
Luretilis is my Parnassus here,
The charming local spring my Hippocrene;
Your Tityrus could pipe his tunes in this
Arcadian scene.
Don’t think because I write of chicory
And olives you’ll eat no more than a sparrow.
That’s for posterity. You know I’m not
A veggie, Maro.
Forget your epic toils, we’ll seize the day
And dedicate a worthy feast to Bacchus,
Casting aside sobriety for once.
Yours truly, Flaccus.
Colin Sydenham
Oh, you must come and visit me, darling,
In this charming old cottage of mine.
I have a nice guest room,
In fact it’s the best room;
The view from it’s simply divine!
There’s tranquillity here in the country.
You will love it; the air is so clean.
We’ll stroll at our leisure,
Deriving much pleasure
From being surrounded by green.
Lots of wildlife abounds in the country,
And meandering rivers as well.
It’s all butterflies, bees,
Hedgerows, birds, fields and trees.
Please come — it’s as lonely as hell!
Jayne Osborn
No. 2429: Vice verse
You are invited to supply a poem (maximum 16 lines) in praise of one of the Seven Deadly Sins. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2429’ by 2 February.
Comments