No. 1230: The winners

Jaspistos reports: Competitors were asked to supply part of an ode in which a bird is unenthusiastically addressing Man or a man.

It all began with Chesterton's 'The Skylark Replies to Wordsworth (as it might have appeared to Byron)': 'Ephemeral minstrel, staring at the sky ...' In this case I asked for an ode, but you tended to turn out a sonnet, or at any rate the routine iam- bic pentameters (to me an 'ode' means a poem in an exalted tone and with an ir- regular metre). As so many of you mistook, or refused to take, my meaning, I let the point pass and have judged in the usual way, on the basis of skill and entertainment — and there was plenty of both. I par- ticularly enjoyed Nigel Andrew's blackbird who was deeply irritated by Edward Thomas's train happening to stop at Adlestrop, N. J. Warburton's thrush on a coppice gate who successfully outgloomed Hardy, and J. J. Webster's 'birdie' jeering at incompetent golfers. Gerard Benson had a neat entry too, which endeared itself fur- ther by the artful and hopeful anagram- matic pseudonym 'Erna Songberd'.

It's a pity there is only room for five win- ners, but they get £10 each to celebrate a sparkling week. I'm off on holiday now for a fortnight, but I hope to return with some bonus brandy for you all. Meanwhile I leave you in the capable and tender hands of my friend Jacomo (no relation).

O Poet Gray, your Eleg' won't do.

'The moping owl' — Hoots, mon, that wasn't true.

I was a hoping owl. I had in view A more romantic aim — to wit, to woo.

'Complain', did I? I'm not a grouse. And who Would wish for solitary reigns, when two Are much more fun than one? I thought men

knew How best to spend the night — to wit, to woo.

Far ruder than your rude forefathers, you Delayed my mate. She was then overdue. She knew a poet 'neath our rendezvous Would spoil our little game — to wit, to woo. Swinburne, old Swinbume, silly old Swinburne, Sing me no more of that sisterly stuff!

Slink off to the city where women in sin burn, Swallows have swallowed enough.

And as for that songbird which 'Itys' repeats It is tired of providing poetical treats, It is miffed about Milton and curt about Keats, And feels it is time to be tough.

For I'll tell you, poor poets, we're all simply sick of This maudlin approach to our practical schemes; You clutch at a straw to make cultural brick of And build a pagoda of dreams.

While all that inspires our spectacular flights Or the music that moves you on midsummer nights Is our lust to maintain territorial rights With a barrage of bellicose screams.

(Mary Holtby) Your long white beard and eye gone wan Are not those you once had, An older but no wiser man Than when you shot my Dad.

Young brides and grooms detest your name, At sight of you they pale; They know your tale — like old champagne It's dreary, flat and stale.

So leave this wedding, put back on Your hard glazed sailor's hat.

I'll make you wish that you had gone: My aim is perfect — splat! (J. C. Causer) Your language, Man, with birds is lightly littered:

In arrogance, you crow, or swan about; In lunacy, you're cuckoo; when embittered, You fly into a rage; to chicken out Is cowardice; cheap hucksters hawk their wares - With what pejoratives our kind is vested! Your moaners grouse, the luckless, lacking hairs, Are coots; the slightly-built are pigeon-chested; A girl is cursed when caught with sparrow's

ankles;

To have a lark's to trivialise; and gannets Are fools; whilst catching thrush — this really rankles -

Is socially distasteful; for a man, it's

Disastrous scoring ducks (you get 'the bird'); A turkey is a failure. Still, these terms (A tit, a wild-goose chase), although absurd, Are nothing to the names we give to worms!

(Belle R. Welling)

We birds have held an honoured place Within the annals of your race — Elijah's ravens, Noah's dove, Leda's swan and Lesbia's love, Minerva's owl, Keats' nightingale, And Chanticleer in Chaucer's tale.

Yet on the whole I think that birds Should judge you by your deeds not words - By scrawny fowls in crowded pen Producing cheaper eggs for men, By sea-gulls black with oily goo, By grouse's August Waterloo, By yearly feasts when once again All the Innocents are slain - And fly away from all save bards And spinsters painting Christmas cards. through.

Had you no other better things to do? Darkness was left to us as well as you.

The ploughman went. Why didn't you go too?

(Joyce Johnson) (0. Banfield)