Spectator competition winners: a liquid lunch with Dante

In Competition No. 3300, you were invited to describe in verse a meal of your choice with a well-known poet, living or dead. 

The entry was a whopper, with too many star performers to name individually. Hats off, all round. The winners, which include David Silverman’s account of going on a bender with Dante, take £25.

Our breakfast stood – a Loaded Plate –
Of Bacon – crisply Hot 
Two Sausages – in bursting skins –
Of mushrooms – a compote
The farmyard’s Gift – two yellow Eggs  
Whose faces – shamed the Sun
Fried Bread that sizzled in the Pan –
Hot Sauce upon my Thumb
A dash of fragrant Marmalade  
Tomatoes – in a Sea
Of Baked Beans yielding rosy Sauce
For added Piquancy.
Our hunger met – our polished Plates –
Did Satisfaction prove
For we had dined – deliciously
And We could – hardly Move –

Janine Beacham

Last week I went for liquid lunch with Dante.
He started with a straight Bacardi Breezer.
I added lime to mine. He upped the ante:
Before long, grinning like the Mona Lisa,
He’s mixed Prosecco with three shots of Pernod;
By now he’s leaning like the Tower of Pisa,
And loudly shouting chunks out of Inferno –
Whole pages from the sixth and seventh Canti,
Then, knocking back a glass of Tuscan Merlot,
Followed by a bottle of Chianti,
He’s singing ‘Jesus, Thou Art My Redeemer’,
Some thirteenth-century Florentine sea shanty,
And ‘Nessun Dorma’ – all in terza rima –
And then, all hope abandoned, in walks Giotto,
They’re belting out ‘The Girl from Ipanema’,
The two Renaissance men completely blotto.

David Silverman

Come into the parlour, Lord,
For it’s cool in the ice cream zone,
Come in for the sorbet, Lord,
It will chill your occipital bone;
And the butterscotch sundaes have won an award,
And there’s mint in a chocolate cone.
I’ve cautioned the owner, Alf Tennyson’s in,
When he sees a gelato, he’ll swoop.
A milk-blossom float with a hint of pink gin?
O snow-tongued and wild, we will whoop.
Tutti