In Competition No. 2440 you were invited to offer a poem which is a pastiche of one or all of the young left-wing poets of the early 1930s, MacNeice, Spender, Auden and Day Lewis. William Empson’s ‘Just a Smack at Auden’ is an affectionate send-up worth looking for. I have room only for one verse:
What was said by Marx, boys, what did he perpend?
No good being sparks, boys, waiting for the end.
Treason of the clerks, boys, curtains that descend.
Lights becoming darks, boys, waiting for the end.
Auden tended to dominate this comp, just as he tended to dominate his contemporaries. Among the non-prizewinning entries that paid impressive tribute to him, those by Ray Kelley and James Womack stood out. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and Michael Swan takes the bonus fiver.
Not for us the extravagant gesture, the parade on stilts,
The highwire walk in the spotlight over the crocodile pool.
What we had to say was uttered not from a burning bush,
But from a desk on the fourth floor, overlooking the park.
To those who would listen, we talked of our griefs and failures,
Of time leaking out of the clocks, of ambition fading,
Of childhood in a torn jumper turning its back on us.
We spoke, too, of dole queues in the docks, of empty mills,
Of rusted rolling stock, of war clouds steadily gathering.
Like you, we delighted in small things, a merry-go-round or a painting,
But also in the appalling beauty of roses and snow.
We will be remembered, and that barely,
As honest men who wrote carefully and without fuss
About the great spinning conundrum of it all, stars over slagheaps,
And who never (who ever does?) got the hang of it entirely.
Michael Swan
To day the hypnotic lie,
The old gang’s strategic denial
As lights are extinguished in all bureaux de poste.
Sentries on important viaducts
Hear the emitted pulse, the intelligent code
Troubled by errors of reading
Where snow muffles the frontier
Or the interpreter’s sickness impedes.
Today the excuse of the listener
In dry river valley and by sudden intriguing volcano,
On pavements insulted by murderous headlines,
And in towns where no orchestra visits.
Today the aerodrome’s garrulous canteen is vacant,
Lovers comply with the confiscation of passports
And the virgin’s wise stare
Is dissolved in the mirror’s retort.
G.M. Davis
It’s no go the IRA, it’s no go the Russians,
All we want is a Daily Mail and weapons of mass destruction.
Their suits are full of mobile phones, their heads are stuffed with bibles,
Their bodyguards wear mirror shades and their caddies carry rifles.
Wavy Davey lost his tie to prove that he was normal,
Tried a bowl of Eton mess, declared it tasted awful.
It’s no go the NHS, it’s no go the Lottery,
All we want is a change of tune and an end to daylight robbery.
The mayor of London took a trip, found he’d blown a gasket,
Hired himself a charabanc for Ladies’ Day at Ascot,
Fed himself on Beaujolais, fed his newts on Irn-Bru,
Commandeered a party girl and stayed out after curfew.
It’s no go the tennis club, it’s no go pyjamas,
All we want is some cyberporn and a stash of marijuana.
The debt is rising day by day, the debt will go on rising,
But paying off the bloody debt won’t brighten the horizon.
Basil Ransome-Davies
A bloody butler cycling by a lake,
A pallid lake surrounded by green willow,
A Balkan princess murdered by mistake,
Three Staunton chessmen left upon her pillow,
The puzzle of her single sapphire earring,
The bungled hold-up at the discothèque,
The abandoned coupé burning in a clearing,
The Hognose viper coiled about her neck:
Each problem posits a unique solution,
Each boil requires a dedicated lancer,
Deft fingers must tease out each convolution;
Unlike real life there has to be an answer,
A special key to fit each special door;
Spool up the string and find your Minotaur.
John Whitworth
The falcon with an innocent precision flies
As feathered lightning,
Too late sighting
The steel snare bewildering his ancient eyes.
Power-lines stretch lethal as the hangman’s rope
From Eiffel gibbets.
Their metal rips
His slender wing, spins him at the down’s green slope.
For an instant, as though questioning his death,
He wheels, faltering,
Then fluttering
Falls like the ash of paper towards the darkening earth,
To be enfolded secretly in the wooded combe,
And soft his grave
For a while saved
From the boundless city they would let our land become.
Hugh King
Listen to this, the heart’s invisible beat,
Tiring of blood rushing this way and that,
Leaving a message to say that, work complete,
It will pack it in, in a few minutes flat.
A bystander contrives, for God’s sake, to condemn
The operation of Time, its well-tried whim:
And somewhere, with a stunted burst of phlegm,
The lights suspire, and your rooms grow dim.
Consider, looking from skyscraper height,
Some pinprick figures, who think to hurry,
Nurtured by nothing, nourished by fright
Or the hint of the future’s approaching slurry:
Daily, the past consumes their present,
Voracious as even a simple infection.
O what’s in the glass? Is it so unpleasant?
Come to the mirror, and make your reflection.
Bill Greenwell
No. 2443: Faking it
You are invited to supply a letter from someone on holiday pretending they are having a good time when in fact they are not. Maximum 150 words. Entries to ‘Competition No. 2443’ by 11 May.
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