In Competition No. 2481 you were invited to supply a poem or a piece of prose ending with Gore Vidal’s nasty gnome, ‘It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.’ I’m not an especially nice person, but I’ve never experienced the pleasant frisson of schadenfreude; in fact, Rochefoucauld’s remark to the effect that there is something not unpleasing in the misfortunes of our friends strikes me as a bum maxim. This week, verse outshone prose so brightly that the prose writers, led by Frank Mc Donald, are not among the prizewinners. These are rewarded with £25 each, while the bonus fiver goes to the loony Hugh King.
I’ve conclusively proved that pigs fly,
The Earth is quite flat,
Stars are just holes in the sky,
And Einstein’s a prat.
My unique understanding of science
Made my jealous and vain
Competitors form an alliance
To declare me insane.
This asylum seems perfect to me.
The staff, although kind,
Are, to truths which I readily see,
Entirely blind.
So I smile as I faultlessly read
While they fumble with Braille.
It’s not enough to succeed.
Others must fail.
Hugh King
The self-made man who buys his first Rolls-Royce
And contemplates the joy he will derive
Can hardly be expected to rejoice
To see another on his neighbour’s drive.
And if a costly watch adorns his wrist,
A just reward for his tenacious climb,
Its efficacy surely should consist
Of more than just a means to tell the time.
The value of these objects is abstruse,
For time and transport are not what they grant;
They may be neither ornament nor use
But he can have them and we scrubbers can’t.
This is the credo of the alpha male:
It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Noel Petty
With the fear that time’s jaws
Would do for his books
What the gouge of its claws
Had done to his looks,
He needed something he wrote
To appeal to the crowd
As a gnome they could quote
And not feel high-browed.
So he worked on a mot
To win him some fame
As an ordinary Joe
Not a Henry James name.
These are words we still read,
Though now they seem stale:
It’s not enough to succeed.
Others must fail.’
W.J. Webster
When it comes to GCSE
It must have occurred to you
How sensible it would be
To let everyone through.
Even the slowest classes
In the very dimmest of schools
Think less than maximum passes
Make them look fools.
All must have what they ask,
Our age’s maxims run,
However badly the task
They are given is done.
Just one exception they need
For their maxims to prevail:
It’s not enough to succeed.
Others must fail.
Paul Griffin
I have not often watched a football game,
But once I bought the ticket. Out they came,
Eager for victory, all such nice guys.
But nice guys finish last. It’s no surprise:
We have wired into us, somehow, I guess,
An all-American dream of success —
A cast of mind that duly replicates
That huge success of these United States.
And I who always nursed within my breast
Pity for losers, for the second best,
I know that victory incurs a cost:
The battle isn’t won until it’s lost.
We need the vanquished, even as we prevail:
It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Martin Woodhead
I recall being led, with a group of lads aged six,
From Sunshine Corner home, each Monday night,
By a saintly soul with a heart of gold, Miss Hicks,
Who adored my childlike charm, to my delight.
Mine, I knew, was the smile she loved the best
As she dished out sweets and assured us, as a treat,
That the one who made his sweet outlast the rest
Would get as his due reward the ‘bonus’ sweet.
My friends, conforming, ate their sweets, poor fools,
I took mine out, until they’d finished theirs,
Then popped it back and learned, by bending rules,
The prize is justly won by he who dares.
Thanks to my devious use of a cunning ruse
(Though some might say it’s a sad and sorry tale),
I enjoyed the thrill of watching others lose:
It’s not enough to succeed. Others must fail.
Alan Millard
No. 2484: Our vegetable loves
I am in hospital — it’s either nil by mouth or vegetable mush — so you are invited to raise my spirits by providing the first 16 lines of an ‘Ode to Vegetables’. Entries to Competition No. 2484 by 1 March.
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