In Competition No. 2792 you were invited to submit a portrait, in verse, of one poet by another.
Gerard Benson wondered if I’d had in mind Richard Greene’s description of Chaucer when I set the challenge. In fact, it was Mallarmé’s pen portrait of his friend Manet — ‘a virile innocence in beige overcoat, beard and thin blond hair, greying with wit’— that sparked the idea.
There was a huge entry with winners enough to fill several pages. After lengthy deliberation, I narrowed it down to the five below, who earn £25 each. Chris O’Carroll, Charles Curran, Anne du Croz and G.M. Davis were unlucky losers. The bonus fiver goes to Basil Ransome-Davies.
You’ll ’ear the British fightin’ man ain’t much
inclined to think,
That when ’e’s finished fightin’ it’s the women
and the drink,
But barrack time to me was meant for readin’
poetry,
Not Tennyson, but Rimbaud, ’oo the Froggies
dub ‘maudit’.
’E was just a skinny sort of kid from Charleville-
Mézières
With a face that looked right through you and a
funny shock of ’air,
And some called ’im a criminal, and others said
a clown,
But ’e took the bloomin’ language and ’e turned
it upside down.
I ’ad ’is verses in my pack amid the shot and shell.
’E knew as sure as soldiers what a season’s like
in ’ell.
There’s nightmares on the battlefield and
nightmares in the brain,
And infantry, like Rimbaud, don’t belong among
the sane.
’E’d packed it in by twenty-one, become a
vagabond
’Oo followed ’is erratic path to Aden and
beyond.
’E traded guns in Africa, made exile ’is career,
And stay-at-’ome old Tennyson outlived him by
a year.
Basil Ransome-Davies
You are old, Father William, and bleat like a
sheep
As you blather of some ‘Intimation’;
You gambol and leap where it’s hilly and steep,
Or you lurk by a lakeside location
Composing your verses, oblivious, deep
In the ponderous throes of creation.
The daffodils peep and the nightingales cheep
As you muse on the sad incantation
Of the solitary lass who doth sickle and reap,
Though her song quite eludes explication.
Your poems, a vast indigestible heap,
Would profit from ruthless truncation,
Yet on nights when insomnia maketh me weep
For a draught that will offer sedation,
I find that your verses can put me to sleep
Far quicker than strong medication.
Brian Allgar
Ther shal arise in Englande on a tyme
A poet whych a straunger is to ryme,
Who shal Aprille, the month of pilgrimage,
Call ‘cruel’, and that doth set me in a rage!
And when he looketh on the evening sonne
He shal not think how manne’s race is yronne,
Nor yet of loveliness whych is not drabbe,
But rather, of a manne laid on a slabbe
Ful senseless — thus shal also be his vers,
With many other synnes, the whych are worse!
His men shal hollowe be, and come and goe,
And shal say ‘twit’ and ‘jug’, that no men knowe
His meanynge. And when all his song is sung,
He shal set words in heathen Indic tongue.
His vers shal with a whymper fynde an ende,
A waste lande which no manne may comprehende.
Brian Murdoch
Before reformers changed the Law — and much
to England’s shame —
The road to Hell was paved with love that dared
not speak its name,
Much flaunted by one hot-house bloom, a richly
gilded lily,
Who hoped that what he practised could be
practised willy-nilly:
Abhorred by some, adored by some, his future
bright and rosy,
The man who went to Reading Gaol by way of
pretty Bosie.
For Man hands cruelty to man, and for a harmless
deed
Society’s propriety condemned him and decreed
The path to his redemption should be long and
stony-hard,
A dreary path, a weary path around a prison yard,
Consigned to shame, resigned to shame among
life’s castaways
Before he went to Paradise by way of Père
Lachaise.
Martin Parker
An image painted in his third decade
Portrays both preening fop and swiving blade,
With rubious lips and darkly shadowed face,
In military drabcoat ruffed with lace.
For then in verse most intricately wrought
He would pursue a woman with a thought;
And though some lines were like his logic
chopped,
They showed a wit that could not be o’ertopped.
But as he cast this youthful life aside
He found his hopes with piety allied:
When God and King and high preferment calls,
What end could have his journey but St Paul’s?
At last as Dean and Doctor to men’s souls
He sounded truth that still as roundly tolls.
His final likeness clad in marble shroud
Proclaims the faith that Death should be not
proud.
W.J. Webster
No. 2795: Palinode
We’ve done this one before but it is worth repeating: you are invited to submit a palinode (a poem retracting a previously expressed opinion) on behalf of a well-known poet (16 lines maximum and please identify source). Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 24 April.
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