In Competition No. 3215, you were -invited to supply a poem about Geronimo the alpaca. The camelid’s fate was finally settled just the day before the closing date for this challenge, and your entries have an added poignancy now that we know which way the dice rolled for poor old Geronimo.
I admired Gareth Fitzpatrick’s touching clerihew and Chris O’Carroll’s Ogden Nash-inflected submission. Elsewhere, amid echoes of Manley Hopkins and Milton, was a nice spin on Gray’s ‘Elegy’ courtesy of Max Ross along with impressive contributions from J.C.H. Mounsey, Mike Morrison and Duncan Forbes.
The winning entries, printed below, earn their authors £25.
They’re all leaning out from the Golden Bar, And scanning the Stairway to Heaven, The martyrs are hymning and stoups are a’brimming With innocent tides from the Severn: There’s St Joan with her pyre, St Bernard the Friar, John Foxe with his quill and his tome, For en route’s a recruit, who is woolly and cute, And they’re waiting to welcome him home There are serfs that were breadless, and kings that are headless, And saints who continue to bleed, Preachers garrotted, and badger cubs slotted ’Cos that was what DEFRA decreed; The nation is grieving (‘they should have reprieved him!’), And Geronimophiles are in spasms. But beyond the neurosis, it’s tuberculosis With innocent blood on its plasms. Nick Syrett
TB or not TB? That is the question. Don’t let them pull the wool over your eyes. It could be croup; it could be indigestion, But now it seems they’re plotting your demise. To live or die, O brave All-Black alpaca — Courageous son of proud Aotearoa? For you we dance the ancient, noble Haka: No Ka Mate for you but loud Ka ora! You were not born for death, immortal llama! Tuberculosis? You’d have croaked by now.
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