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COMPETITION

Der Lattenzaun

Jaspistos

IN COMPETITION NO. 1939 you were asked for a verse translation, close or loose, of Christian Morgenstern's poem of this title.

As Noel Coward urged, don't let's be beastly to the Germans; in fact, I honour them this week. Ten poems by the amusing and highly original Morgenstern can be found brilliantly translated by R.F.C. Hull in More Comic & Curious Verse (Penguin), now, alas, out of print. His version of `Der Lattenzaun' is exemplary. Although I was prepared to accept any metre (Mrs Rowan Edwards did it skilfully into four limericks) the rhymed octosyllabic verse of the origi- nal seems best suited to the atmosphere of lucid looniness (compare 'Humpty Dump-

ty's Song' in Alice).

I was delighted by the siie of the entry, which included several competitors from Germany. Judith Graham, from Heidel- berg, would have won a prize if her fifth stanza hadn't been weak in both rhyme and sense; her last stanza, though, was deli- cious: 'However, fleeing frantically,/He got away Atlantically.' I salute, too, Ursula Runde's pun: 'The Council pulled the of- fence down.' The prizewinners, printed below, earn £20 each, and the bonus bottle of Isle of Jura Single Malt Scotch whisky is Chris Tingley's, A paling fence once graced the scene, With gaps that let you peer between.

One evening, unannounced, up came An architect. He left the frame But took the gaps between the wood And built the biggest house he could.

Just palings now — no gaps at all - The fence was what you'd frankly call

An eyesore, showing up the town. The Council had it taken down. The architect contrived to flee. Africa? Yanlcsville? You tell me.

(Chris Tingley) A fence with slats once stood on view With spaces in, for looking through.

An architect who saw this fence Appeared one evening there, and thence The spaces in it he conveyed, From which a mighty house he made.

Meantime the silent fence was seen With slats but nothing in between, A horrid, ugly sight to see; So it came down, by state decree.

The architect then flew away To Afric- or Americay.

(Frank McDonald) This tale's about a fence of wood With spaces — looking through was good.

One dusk an architect passed by And suddenly they caught his eye.

He used the spaces to create A giant building: it was great. Meanwhile, the hapless, foolish fence Was wood, and made no further sense — A really cheap and cheerless sight. The Law drew round to set this right.

But the architect put on his skates And fled — where? Africa? The States?

(Bill Greenwell) Once there was a slatted fence With intermediate see-through vents.

An architect, who'd slyly eyed it, One evening turned up right beside it And took the open spaces home To build a stately pleasure-dome.

The fence meanwhile stood there shamefaced, With slats left quite uninterspaced.

The charge they read him in the court Was 'no invisible support'.

The architect got clean away To Afric- or Americay. (Joe Bain) A paling fence once prized its gaps Which lovers might kiss through perhaps.

One evening, as he wandered by, They caught an architect's green eye.

Who hatched a wicked stratagem, Stole all and built a ranch with them.

Devoid of gaps, with planks intact, The fence was naked and gobsmacked.

The Senate couldn't well permit So crude a sight and bulldozed it.

The architect, the shameless fraud, Sagaciously made off abroad.

(J.C.M. Hepple)

No. 1942: Dickens of a job

Dickens was a master of the paragraph- length sketch introducing an unpleasant character. You are invited to produce such a sketch, in the style of the master, of a fic- tional contemporary Avernment or council employee. Maximum 150 words. Entries to 'Competition No. 1942' by 18 July.