COMPETITION
Going through the motions
Christopher Howse
IN COMPETITION NO. 2094, you were asked for a 'laureate' poem on a banal subject.
The death of a corgi was given as an example and widely attempted. It was rivalled as fit matter among your entries only by fishbones (in the throat). Otherwise it was coryzal congestion (as if from Nahum Tate, in Alyson Nikiteas's baroque couplets) or, more surprisingly, circumcision — though this subject did not attract the touching tone of straight- forward royalist celebration that charac- terised a remarkable number of entries. Indeed, quasi-regal qualities were even projected on to Humphrey the Downing Street cat, in an ode by Fiorella Sultana.
Scattered elements of the late Ted Hughes were caught up in several poems' crows and salmon (bones), but imitations of Mr Laureate Motion's voice were much rarer. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus bottle of The Macallan Single Malt Highland Scotch whisky goes to G.M. Davis's bald verses.
When hair departs, where does it go? Curled in the waste trap like a sleeping cat, or shed invisibly on carpets, it seems always to have a sneaky life of its own, as if resentful of attachment, even to a crowned head.
Yours started to leave early, and now, leaving only marginal survivors to grace your ears, it has left you cue-ball clean, your scalp a bare dome on which your eyebrows are stuck in the manner of lower-storey pelmets. Don't let it make you sad, though. We all lose something sometime: your great-uncle his throne, your grandpa an empire, and your brothers their wives.
At least now you reflect more light, a royal and shining example to us all.
(G. M. Davis) The Prince of Wales has come to do What he has been commissioned to In duty's service; And watching him, we wonder why He shoots his cuffs and trims his tie With restless hands repeatedly. Could he be nervous?
Of all the estimable traits That make it possible to praise His Royal Highness As worthy of his princely post, Let us acknowledge now, and toast That charming trait we cherish most: His royal shyness. (Ray Kelley) After the morning scuffle, breathless among the herbaceous borders Sweet Williams, lilies in waiting, butt ends of Crown Imperials She appears herself, sharp as ever at dogs-body heels, or the common-ness of cats and casual kittens, but her breath grows less, lessens; not even a royal Caress — the mediaeval medical cure-all — can whistle back a corgi to her court of bones. Breathing ceases; her canine self Slips pomp, departs. No more dog days. Cornered, she lies as cushioned as in life under Dog-daisies, Dents-de-lion and stately Dog Berries.
(D. A. Prince) Here is the pale pink salmon which leapt from the fork with too much taste up the royal gullet again, snapping a bone in haste And the happy ambulance which returned to its royal space in the car park at St James. There was no warning as when a shark Rogers the waves. Yet the loyal physicians took tweezers, and other items of regalia and prised it out. The nation's passions were jollier When the news announced: 'The leaping fish has left no trace. No need to panic', as with the Crown Jewels lost in The Wash Bring gin, tonic.
(Bill Greenwell)
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