COMPETITION

Bouts limes

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 2133 you were invited to write a poem with certain given rhyme-words in a given order.

This looked deceptively simple — all those common, monosyllabic rhyme-words — but 'fish' proved difficult to introduce without strain. In fact, the rhyme scheme is taken from Auden's 'Roman Wall Blues' ('Piso's a Christian, he worships a fish;/ There'd be no kissing if he had his wish.') in which the repeated rhymes sky/why . . eye/sky cleverly suggest the monotony of the legionary's frontier duty.

The prizewinners, printed below, take £25 each, and the bottle of the Macallan single malt Highland Scotch whisky is won by Noel Petty — like Papillon, 'by a nose'.

It didn't need to come to blows, I didn't want to punch his nose About a wretched patch of sky. How did it get this far, and why? It wasn't me first cast the stone; That noisy barbecue alone Compelled me to protect my place With cypress planted in his face. It wasn't me cried stinking fish When diddums didn't get his wish To see them axed and hauled away.

But fractious neighbours have to pay, And now each time he lifts his eye He'll learn who owns the bloody sky.

(Noel Petty) I never thought that it would end in blows And me, with blue-black eye and bloody nose, Flat on my back surveying a blue sky! Now, every day, I ask the question, 'Why?' Was it because he weighed a mere ten stone That I had thought, alas, that I alone Of all the menfolk in that watering place Could safely stand and tell him to his face That he smelt like a decomposing fish? Well, I was wrong, all right, I only wish That I had had the sense to go away And find some other place to spend my pay. Meanwhile, I've got a raw steak on my eye That's just about as blue now as the sky!

(John Harvey) When the sand-dry khamsin blows, Sphinx with mutilated nose Gazes at the burning sky, Pleading dumbly, 'Tell me why I, enigma trapped in stone, Live among these dead alone, Guarding this sepulchral place, Lion with half-human face.

Would I were a bird or fish; Then I might fulfil my wish, Leave these sands and drift away, Have no tribute pledged to pay That one great all-seeing eye Blasting torment from the sky.' (O. Smith)

Ill the wind that no good blows: When Papillon won it by a nose I'd planned to watch the race on Sky But then the wife had nagged me: `Why Don't you move your eighteen stone And not be sitting home alone,

But drive me to the market-place? I need some new cream for my face And you can buy a bit of fish And place a small bet, if you wish.'

I backed Papillon straight away, I hit him with my whole week's pay, And let me say with misty eye,

There is a God up in the sky!

(Iggy McGovern) Deep in December when midwinter blows, Old Father Christmas with cherry-bright nose Comes with his stardust and sweeps though the sky, And only wise children can understand why. At the foot of an apple-tree, under a stone, Larry the Leprechaun lives all alone; I'm sure I could find him a friendlier place In return for a glimpse of the smile on his face.

In a bay where in secret I swim and I fish The mermaids are waiting to grant me a wish; They'll take me to palaces, hidden away, And leaving the world is the price I must pay. What fantasies form in the mind's magic eye As I sit in a classroom and yearn for the sky.

(Andrew Brison) Across the cliffs the east wind blows To chill the fingers, nip the nose.

There's snow in that grey lowering sky And yet we pace the beach. Oh why Do they just find the odd ridged stone, Some sand-caked shells, a crab alone In death? In this forbidding place I tell the kids which rocky face Is rich in fossils. Rotting fish Is much more obvious. I wish I'd stayed in school. A day away Seemed promising; who knew I'd pay This heavy price? I keep my eye On Seven D — and on the sky. (G. McIlraith)