Competition

IN COMPETITION No 224, you were invited to write a poem called In the Dark. The dark was everywhere: in the deepest (past blue) ocean with Joyce Bunting, among the dustbins grim-reaping away with Nicholas Stone or at the typewriter, clueless with Max Gutmann. Commiserations to them and congratulations to those printed here, two of whom by chance treated ‘darkling’ in quite different ways, and each of whom wins £25, with the enlightening bonus prize of a Chambers Biographical Dictionary going to D A Prince.

‘Darkling,’ John said – always a quote to

hand, though never something useful like a

torch. Even his phone was flat. We stumbled on. I left the big umbrella in the porch, he said, so brightly it rang like a boast, his words awash with pure self

satisfaction. No other gleams. Somewhere we’d find

our path, or so he said. Then we’d be back in

action.

Downhill or uphill? It was hard to tell, so thickly dark that everything dissolved. His New Year’s Night romantic moorland

drive? One kaput car, us lost; and me, resolved I’d had enough of poetry and quotes. Tomorrow, come the dawn, we would

explore how a joint future is as dark as night. They overlap, this real v metaphor. D A Prince

So out went the candle, and we were all left… King Lear

Though ITD’S a decent phrase, My preference is ‘darkling’: A sable word from earlier days, With just a hint of sparkling.

O darkle, darkle, cosmic hole, Insatiably blackling! Your darkle’s like a frozen coal, Enwrapped in some thick sackling,

Or dumped in Robert’s frosty woods (Eternally unpeopled), Which left a million childhoods So darkled and so deepled.

What follows? Carroll’s riddling Snark Charms some, leaves others snarling; So you may claim you’re in the dark, But I say darkling, darling. Julia Griffin?

The Sun is young, but when it dies Its monumental girth Will briefly bloat to such a size It swallows up the Earth.

And even if we’ve settled Mars That does no good at all, Not when our oh-so-precious star’s A wizened clinker ball.

The Universe is likewise doomed, For all its energy Must ultimately be consumed By cruel entropy.

No god has turned the lights off yet (We’re hanging in there still), But in the future you can bet The laws of physics will. Rob Stuart

About most things I’m in the dark: The boson, lepton and the quark And how our weird world began And why it was God fashioned man. I’m lost about the stratosphere, The many moons of Jupiter And how a massive Boeing flies With me inside across the skies. A host of questions puzzle me, Why people trust the SNP, And why it was Theresa May Threw her majority away. And why once nice Coronation Street With sex and murder is replete. I’m in the dark but I suppose The Old Man of the Mountains knows. Max Ross

COMPETITION No 226 I’ve just had to run to save some from burning, so a poem, please, called The Toast, in any sense. Maximum 16 lines. Entries, by post (The Oldie, Moray House, 23/31 Great Titchfield Street, London W1W 7PA) or email (comps@theoldie. co.uk – include your postal address), to ‘Competition No 226’ by 1st March.