No. 1220: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked for a translation of a poem that Leonid Brezhnev might have written in his starrier" eyed youth. To have stars in your eyes is not the same as having a twinkle in your eye, so those of you who credited the young Leonid with either a straight or twisted sense of hual°11! missed the particular bus I had in mind. And, however heroically the youth maY have dreamed, heroic couplets didn't seem to me to be a likely form in which his dreams would be enshrined. There was 3 big and enthusiastic, as befitted the subject, entry, and the best of the losers was Fiona Pitt-Kethley, who had the bright idea of presenting wee Brezhnev as so devoid of originality that he was driven to making use of the titles of famous Russian works of literature in order to cobble up a poem: 'A raw youth, the friend of the family, I was insulted and injured,

Possessed by Uncle Vanya's three sisters In the cherry orchard.'

There are five winners this week, all of whom managed successfully to evoke the dedicated round-head who must once have

stubbornly tried to climb Parnassus and on- ly reached Camp 1. They get £8 each and my congratulations.

I will arise and go now, and go to Novgorod, And a hydro-electric plant establish there On the banks of the swiftly-flowing Volchov, And well will it fare.

(Nigel Andrew) 0 it is incontrovertible! 1 hear them! From the gloom of the city's abysses their voices rise!

On the endless plains their feet make noises like the sea!

Yes, my brother! You too have heard correctly! These are the tatterdemalion armies of the poor! Quit your ironmongering and join us! The strength of your brawny arms is needed! My sister, lay aside your mattock! You too can help And I shall ensure that targets are exceeded every quarter BY happy workers labouring night and day, And many a kilowatt shall be extracted from the water, A wondrous thing I say.

I will arise and go now, for I can almost hear The rushing of the waters, the turbine's merry note - And I know the Order of Lenin will soon be mine to wear, Shining on my overcoat. with the hospitalisation of the inevitable casualties in the great struggle ahead of us!

My head spins! I can scarcely see!

I write these verses in a rapture for the unborn generations who will read them when the storm clouds piled high above the dim horizon have broken and the sun shines on us without interruption!

(Robin Davidson) J's for the jollity shed by his smile; O's his omniscience free from all guile; S is his selflessness, always untiring, E his endeavour, forever aspiring; P stands for pluck — his soars to the pinnacle!

H is his honesty, searching and clinical.

Sternly he purges the faintheart and traitor, Tenderly guides us (compassionate pater!), Anxiously shields us from doom and disaster, Lenin's disciple (eclipsing his master!), Inwardly calm, though the struggle be hectic Not just a man but a Force Dialectic! (Rufus Stone) Now, when the Motherland Soviet Union is a young, fresh bride of Lenin And Ukraine is their generously endowed darling, Black of earth but richly red inside with the life-blood of proletarian purpose,

I march out at the head of my eager, fresh- faced Komsomol detachment And liquidate kulaks.

Good is it now to be alive But to be exterminating exploiters is to live in a very utopia - Like a foretaste of the withering away of the State, That glorious moment when, my work achieved, I shall at last be permitted by history to retire.

Sternly but tenderly also we test tractors, Joyfully we extend electrification, with love in our hearts we smelt socialist pig-iron: Three invariables in the mighty equation That guarantees the masses a healthful life and happiness (But only as long as they are Under the vanguard of the CPSU).

(Charles Mosley) My heart is a but in Siberia - Fling wide its doors So that a wind from Archangel May kill the black cockroach Despair.

Now it is fit to enter, We will heap up logs for our stove, Draw our red curtains close And sup on our bortsch and black bread.

Let the wolves howl after other men's sledges, The bear claw at our doors, The snow cover up our windows - We are warm inside.

Spring. The melting of ice.

The birches are green.

Let us emerge, my love, And set red flames in the fields. (0. Banfield)