COMPETITION

Come back, please

Jaspistos

n Competition No. 1458 you were asked for a sonnet expressing the same sort of sentiments about somebody else as Words- worth expressed in his about Milton.

On the whole, it was a pretty po-faced crew whose resurrection you clamoured for — Carlyle, John Knox, Lord Reith, Tho- mas Cranmer, Thoreau, Gladstone, Mrs Grundy, even Wordsworth (Thou shouldst be living at this hour To halt such a burlesquing of thy sonnet'). Henry the Second and Queen Victoria were called for, but not William the Conqueror, though Attila was oddly invited back to destroy 'Cotswold antique shops that price in dollars'. Even more oddly, Dickens of all people was entreated to `silence the sour, Complaining voice of London's homeless hordes'.

I. C. Snell, Michael Walters, 0. Ban- field, Charles Mosley, Loveknot Parsons, Mary Holtby and A. Ambo were all good contenders, but the money — a tenner a sonnet — goes to the winners printed below, and the bonus bottle of gin, the gift of Mr William Topham, is secured by D. A. Prince, the only competitor to handle with wit and grace the tricky Petrarchan sonnet-form.

Beeton! thou should'st be living at this hour! Good food has need of thee: restaurants, disgraced, Arrange three mange-touts round a quail's egg, laced With raspberry vinegar; a critic's power Can make or break. Lotte, sculpted like a flower,

77 nouvelle's demier cri; prevailing taste *z lost its way among a barren waste

od that titillates — now sweet, now sour. Th, ime is ripe for decent, honest grub Liver and bacon, dumplings, shepherd's pies, While succulent steak-and-kidney pudding lies In bubbling gravy; trifle, thick with custard, Piled apple crumbles, brandied syllabub, And, 0 rare treat, Welsh rarebit spiked with mustard. • (D. A. Prince) Lennon, you're cruelly missed. For six years now, Since fame backfired and blew your life away, The singers have been figurines of clay Glazed with slick hype and artificial wow. They're small and spruce. They soothe like sedatives.

Their tunes are candy, good for half an hour As novelties, then flavourless or sour.

I wish the scrawl were true that 'Lennon lives'.

I read this in a bar in Amsterdam Where, lapping coffee, puffing on a spliff, I thought of your and Yoko's bed-in stunt.

Naive and daft? Maybe. But who cares if Your life was crosswise, awkward, back-to- front?

You sang rebellion, and you hated sham. (Basil Ransome-Davies) Fowler! thou shouldst be living at this hour: You done brilliant. Know wat I mean. Yet They dont learn us. Grammar as gone sour.

We dont speak or rite proper. And I bet Your turning in your grave! But there you go.

Its telly. And the ads. Admen dont care Like wat you did. Parsing is out. And so Is punctuation. And spelling. And their Aint no use arranging them committees.

Its too late. Only dead men no the rules.

Comprehensives in our inner cities Just aint the same as the old grammar schools!

Will fings improve? They cant get any worse And see how tatty it all looks. In verse. (D. B. Jenkinsoa) To Wilfred Owen No, no, my boy; I see it wasn't funk That made you talk of fighting men as cattle; It was the pity of the gentle monk Under the type of brute who thrives on battle; But you have won the battle of the mind; The way we think has changed since your decease; Now monks abound and brutes are hard to find; I wish you were alive to see this peace. Would you be there among hunt saboteurs? Or would you swell the Left's hyperbole? Would you protest against the trade in furs, Or write great poems for the CND? Or would you rather miss the men you knew, Who loved their land, and did what they must do? (Paul Griffin) Matthews! you should be dribbling at this hour. The England that your genius formed and guided Is now become a mangy third-rate power

By lesser nations humbled and derided.

Oh, could I see you pull that honest boot on, 'Twould drive away an epoch of ill humours. Then would we see the upstart Gaul and Teuton Once more undone by those mesmeric bloomers. Yet would we never see you stamp and swear, Or model beachwear, own a flash boutique, Consort with page-three girls, or dye your hair, Or ask for more than ninety bob a week. Alas! the captains and the kings depart Until another comes to match thy art.

(Noel Petty) 1985 Bright Star, would I were confident as some That I had seen you through my telescope And not the imprint of my grandson's thumb Or some blur born of alcohol and hope! Halley! You should be living at this hour! Your comet needs you, Sir, and so do I.

Dupe of the media's persuasive power,

nightly peer into a cloudy sky; Unlike Keats' fabled watcher of the skies Your comet never swims into my ken, And I confess my only wild surmise Turned out to be the lantern on Big Ben. Meanwhile I stand here getting a stiff neck Silent upon a roof in Tooting Bec!

(Peter Plowden-Wardlaw)