Competition
IN COMPETITION No 265, you were invited to write a poem using 12 rhymes, taken, as it happens, from John Masefield’s poem The Tewkesbury Road (‘Where the shifty-eyed delicate deer troop down to the brook to drink’).
Mirth was a hard rhyme to accommodate, as perhaps it was for Masefield. One of you changed it to birth, but that broke the rules. There was much drinking during lockdown. As Peter Davies encapsulated it, ‘I overeat, I overdrink and get up three times in the night.’ Richard Love began, ‘How often do I wonder where/ I left my specs,’ a thought occurring also to Paul Elmhirst and Peter Chambers.
I White composed an enjoyable ‘Edgar Allan Poem’ which began ‘Her Ladyship is dead, at my fell hand’. Tim Lloyd narrated a bomber raid over Germany; Martin Elster told a tale about throwing starfish. Commiserations to them and to Dorothy Pope, Richard Shepherd, Jane Bower, Joe Houlihan, Mary Hodges, Robert Schechter, G B White and Liz Summerson, and congratulations to those printed below, each of whom wins £25, with the bonus prize of that box of delights The Chambers Dictionary going to Bea Perry for her ‘Unequal conversation’.
You tell me of your project: when and where; I hesitate, and answer: how and why? My thoughts you just dismiss as wasted air – I might as well ask questions of the sky. Frustration brings me closer to the brink; Unseen, my knuckles clench to bloodless white. Opinions scorned, I pour myself a drink (For me, this guarantees a dreamless night). And will you always, while we share this earth, Wrong-foot me with your glib, selfserving words? If so, our conversation, shorn of mirth, Means no more than the twittering of birds. Bea Perry
I couldn’t tell you when it was, I couldn’t tell you where And I’m sure I’ll never know the reason why. I only know we heard it, through some magic in the air, A cacophony of verse that split the sky. I couldn’t say what held us there – what nudged us to that brink That made our brains believe that black was white. It’s trite and oversimplified to blame it on the drink Or on the vague excesses of the night.
But what brought us close together also brought us back to earth And through that strange kaleidoscope of words We laughed as though we didn’t know the reasons for our mirth And launched our dreams like eager new-fledged birds. Con Connell
‘This path must lead to somewhere,’ He said, and she wondered why, Why she had followed him out into the cold night air When only a crescent moon lit up the sky. Walking swiftly, he led her to the brink And together they watched the foaming water white. She wished she hadn’t had so much to drink And wondered how she would get home that night. He laid her body in the soft damp earth, The rushing water whispered unheard words. While he returned to warmth and light and mirth, She remained no more to hear the birds. Jennifer Willis
In Hampstead, Keats lay listening, wondering from where A song melodious charmed him. He knew why His soul cleaved to the singer’s joyous air, Calling from beeches and a darkling sky. Mortal, he knew that he was on the brink Of death, his body thin, his youthful visage white. That pain might ease with taking of strong drink, The blushful Hippocrene, more purple than the night. Out from the dark, scents of the flowers of earth Set him to ponder on life’s transience, to find the words To wish for dance and song and sunburned mirth, While sobbed the nightingale, most passionate of birds. G M Southgate
COMPETITION No 267 Christopher Smart considered his cat in verse, as did Edward Lear. A poem, please, on a cat’s view of a famous (named) person. Maximum 16 lines. We still can’t accept any entries by post, I’m afraid, but do send them by e-mail (comps@theoldie.co.uk – don’t forget to include your own postal address), marked ‘Competition No 267’, by 6th May.