Spectator competition winners: Dylan Thomas changes his tune

In Competition No. 3332 you were invited to supply, in verse form, a retraction of beliefs previously believed in passionately.

You weren’t obliged to step into the shoes of a real poet but many chose to and some smart, entertaining about-turns included Robert Schechter’s ‘Palinode on a Grecian Urn’:

‘Truth is beauty,’
I said smugly,
but lived to find
that truth is ugly.

Other standout performers included Janine Beacham, George Simmers and Alex Steelsmith, and they were unlucky to miss out on a place in the winners’ enclosure. Those entries that made the final cut are printed below and earn their authors £25.

The world is charged with grandeur we applaud,
The sheen and perfume of its sky, sea, soil.
To all that drones is nature’s spree the foil.
Our world’s most ordinary when most odd.
Theistic explanations, though, defraud
When we to truth aspire to live loyal,
So shrug off any supernatural coil,
Acknowledge that our former faith was flawed.

In hymning nature, let us be content
To credit this world’s swinging as it swings
To true effects, not myths our hearts invent.
The mind to fables and traditions clings,
Which it is now essential to repent,
For we know we know real from conjured things.

Chris O’Carroll/Gerard Manley Hopkins

Great Schuman Plan designed to mean
That never could a single nation
Ignite the hell the world had seen
Through steel production domination.
A common market, fairly ordered,
Bright and starry flag unfurled:
States united, now unbordered,
Trade goods not blows – oh, brave Old World!
But then the bureaucrats took hold,
Dictating rules de haut en bas,
All micromanaged, court-controlled,
The centralising gone too far.
Hence Brussels-Strasbourg back and forth,
The visionary myopia,
The South exploited by the North,
A sadly failed eutopia.

W.J. Webster

Why struggle painfully? Why ever fight
A destiny you know is hard and fast?
Go gentle, boyo, into that good night.

Consider this: each breath may be your last.
And guess what happens then? An end to pain.
So