Torquemada

In Competition No. 2383 you were asked to supply a poem (preferably with rhymes) in which each line contains an anagram (more than one word can be involved).

I intended this comp to be torture, I hoped that my postbag would consequently be light this week, I even tackled my own task but didn’t get much further than: ‘A horse along a shore can happily trot: A carthorse in an orchestra cannot.’ To my amazement, I was landed with a big entry that glittered with ingenuity. (Some of you, I suspect, own anagram dictionaries, and why not?) Commendations to Tim Raikes, Andrew Brison and Basil Ransome-Davies. The winners, printed below, get £25 each, barring Shirley Curran, who comes top with £30.

You can tell I’m bored, emotionally curbed,
The truth is it hurts to be single and free.
My admirer is married, my parents perturbed,
The neighbours are talking, the eyes they see.
He’s an elegant man, such a gentleman
But I know that the answer just wasn’t here;
Faced with parental fury and paternal ban
I’ve lived with hysteria right through this year,
Not clothed in white but out in the cold,
Quite hated, with death threats loud in the air,
Not praised as a bride but deep in despair,
With the harder lot of growing rather old
Seeking only a Brit just like Tony Blair
Or some troubled old brute of a millionaire.
Shirley Curran

These I will store: Brooke’s kind and friendly sheet,
The joy Keats takes from Autumn’s benison,
Blake wandering through each bleak and chartered street,
And any sonnet signed A. Tennyson;
Landor not striving, Arnold at Dover beach,
Clear summer days with Nature and John Clare,
Swinburne on deadly wine, Burns’ haggis speech,
Hardy’s heart sad at her deserted chair.
Wordsworth’s dear blooms I dare not grudge a space,
Such golden scenes I also longed to view;
The pharaoh of Shelley — yes, he’ll have a place,
And Byron’s Belgian halls shall be there too.
These