COMPETITION

Cudgel your brains

Jaspistos

In Competition No. 1591 you were chal- lenged to write a 16-line rhopalic blank verse epistle with four words per line.

Yes, it's tough at the top. All the same, about a dozen of you reached the peak without comically heavy breathing. Among the crevasses that threatened were too many adverbial last words in lines, blank verse of unacceptable unconventionality, and (the old pitfall) addressing Jaspistos in humorous or plaintive tones on the subject of the competition. Judging was more difficult than usual. Peter and Chris Ting- ley missed the money by a whisker, and Stanley Shaw would have been in it if his entry had been even fairly 'epistolary'.

Nice work, too, came from Sam N. Bhutto and Gerard Benson.

The prizewinners below get /15 each, and the bonus bottle of Cognac Otard VSOP, presented by the Château de Cog- nac, goes to M. R. Macintyre.

Dear Mildred, speediest acknowledgements!

My visit challenges, unparalleled, All other similar experience, From Friday afternoon's expectancy To Monday's compliments matutinal.

Cold water, constantly available, Helped towards character development, One's feeble tendencies diminishing.

How welcome temperate sobriety Is after contrary indulgences.

Your mother's apercus, original

As ever, stimulate unfailingly.

One problem: Filofax invisible.

Please hasten registered delivery To office, urgency immediate.

Kind regards. Sincerely, Henrietta. (M. R. Macintyre) Dear Lady (feminine nomenclature Is awfully difficult; nevertheless I persist, obstinate Edwardian), Your absence yesterday, library-wise', Caused sorrow. Carpenter's biography Of Auden tranquillised, Euripides Was simply Nembutal, soporific All fiction, non-fiction, quasi-fiction Please return, blue-stocking, revivify My arid afternoons. Ninety-year-olds, The jealous middle-aged notwithstanding, Need eyefuls, basketfuls, wheelbarrowfuls Of beauty. Teenagers, conceivably, Need something different — intelligence, Calm, humour, scholarship, intuition:

My forte, damnable Eurydice!

(Blaise Chipstone) Friend, listen: underneath frivolity Lie instincts — murderous, intransigent — That slyly demonstrate destructiveness. When pratfalls stimulate hilarity Hear laughter echoing compulsively. Why? Because secretly humanity Has longings — primitive, uncivilisd — For chaos, homicide unlimited. Come closer, sceptical philanthropist; This mountain scenery's delectable. Our little precipice enchantingly Shows vistas otherwise invisible. Lean over trustingly, companion... (Push!) Falling, realise regretfully My laughing solitude establishes The former argument's validity. (Paul Griffin) Dear Mr Parkinson, unpiloted

The Nasa Voyager compliantly

Has travelled Neptunewards, obedient To orders telegraphed unceasingly, Past countless asteroids encumbering That airy nothingness, infinity.

Now, Neptune photographed, entanglement In earthly filaments increasingly Is broken. Masterless, unmanacled,

In freedom Voyager accelerates

To starry desolate oblivion.

Here British motorways infuriate The earthbound motorist. Impediments, Cones, mending, maintenance, emergencies, Are daily worsening occurrences.

Take action, Minister, accordingly (D. Shepherd) Dear Princess (overlook indulgently my direct informal salutation, please) today arising, unsuspecting, my early ritual dissipated, while bathing, sleepily —incredulous — I listened: 'Buckingham. officially.

the Palace. . agreement. . separation!'

The shower callously punctuated each horrid, terrible, devastating phrase, later, breakfasting, examining the morning newspaper (oblivious of other tragedy, calamity, or shocking disaster wheresoever),

I noted estrangement notwithstanding,

that divorce, postponing finality, you forswear. Precedent unattractive?

(Ted Man) This summer's personal discovery: Our garden residents' loquacity.

Stern, spiky lavender admonishes The laughing Japanese anemone, While fuchsias happily confabulate And roses buttonhole insistently The cranesbill, reticent geranium; A yellow extrovert hypericum Gives faultless matinee performances; The nearby clematis, assiduous As ever, wittily elaborates With wordy tentacles; hibiscuses Send wine-dark messages unceasingly To autumn crocuses considering Their brittle, tenuous appearances.

Thus gardens cultivate relationships.

(David Heaton)