Already a subscriber? Log in
Wordsworth the surgeon’s revenge fantasy, courtesy of R.S. Gwynn, impressed, as did Jim Hayes’s pastiche of Poe’s ‘The Raven’. On equally sparkling form were Susan Therkelsen, David Mackie, Greg Whitehead and Martin Parker. They were unlucky to lose out to the victors, below, who are each rewarded with £25. Basil Ransome-Davies scoops £30.
Though it is all too fatefully present to my consciousness that it is as an emigré artist — an American who has ‘upped sticks’ to Europe — that the world knows me, and that this is a rôle which I cannot in good faith altogether disown, as one might a fanciful sobriquet, I possess, for good or ill, none of the destinarian certainties that gripped the early congregations of New England: in short, I am an author less born than malgré lui and an exile by way of the designation, so to speak, ‘happening’ to me with the force (albeit not the fatality) of an avalanche, while my inner alter ego, a restless, nativist avatar, skins beaver and dodges tomahawks in the fantastical forests of the still-to-be-civilised West, where in the argot of an untutored yet vital democracy ‘a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do’.
Basil Ransome-Davies/Henry James
At that unformèd age, half man, half boy,
Unchosen still my path before me lay.
Poetry beckoned, but a long-held dream
Offered a bolder way, a less austere,
For I had read of southern cities, where
Were staked great fortunes on the fall of cards
At tables ruled by men called croupiers,
Sultry of countenance and deft of hand.
In bedroom glass I aped that haughty mien
And with much study gained some aptitude
In dealing cards and spinning phantom wheels,
While in dull northern tones pronouncing clear
‘Messieurs, Mesdames, regardez, faites vos jeux!’
Or, with a flourish, ‘Rien ne va plus.’
But ever as I dreamed, conviction grew
That fate had marked me out for other things.
Noel Petty/Wordsworth
I grew up with wide horizons in that country once called Hidalgo where wolves howled from distant low hills on winter nights. Among taciturn men and watchful horses, I conceived a desire for another life, a life in Personnel. My father disapproved of my fantasies of diversity strategies and equal opportunity questionnaires, but he could neither cajole nor beat this tameness out of me. Heading horseless for the city, I sought the circumscribed horizons of an office cubicle. Interviews without number I attended, but always interlocutors preferred to hear of my past on the ranch than of any projected future improving staff satisfaction. My leathered skin, my watchful eyes, that slow and careful speech common to wilds where no man goes unarmed, none of these things endeared me to the panel. So I built my own cubicle, as some men must, managing the resource of my own humanity into fiction.
Adrian Fry/Cormac McCarthy
I read the wretched wrecks of dreams and hopes.
I trace the tracks of tears, so wan and ghostly.
I see the letters in their envelopes,
And the addresses, neatly written mostly.
You have to keep your spirits up, you must
Preserve the possibility of better.
Your past and future crumble into dust
And yet you find the strength to write a letter
To me, to me. Because? Because to tell
Your sadness and your suffering amends them?
The wounds you bare here never will be well,
You know, I know, we know that nothing ends
them.
Something far back, too far, was bad begun.
No comfort save the lack of comfort. None.
John Whitworth/Philip Larkin
Of Mankindes Musick, and the Holy Sound,
Reverberous and True, of that Great Organ,
Which, to the Lauding of my Maker, I would
play
With Dextrous Fingers and swift-moving Feete,
Sing, Muse; for what, I fondly aske, avails
This arduous Crafte of Verse to one who, Blind,
And thus made Impotent to Praise his Lord
In Wordes innumerous as the grains of Sand
That dwell in all the Desarts of the Earth?
Were it not better done to Daily mount
Into the Minstrells Loft and there, with Sounds
Celestial, Psalme th’Almighty? yea, with Fugue
And Anthem, thunder and astound the Eares
Of those who Congregate, with Diapasons;
Else, with Soft Pipings, as the Shepherd King
Erst on the Plaines of Sion thrilled the Aire.
Gerard Benson/Milton
My heart aches when in autumn’s warming mist
I bid farewell to swallows, swifts and geese,
and wish I’d been an ornithologist
observing birds in nature’s perfect peace.
I would have viewed the lark in thoughtful skies
and known the secrets of her exaltation;
the nightingale that earned my youthful sighs
would teach me to recall her incantation.
I’d know by heart the linnet’s lovely psalm
and recognise the redpoll in her nest;
I’d seek the crags where golden eagles come,
and roam around where gentle rock-doves rest.
Those melancholy moods that fill my mind
would surely go before a blackbird’s call;
instead of contemplating urns I’d find
more truth and beauty in a sparrow’s fall.
Frank McDonald/Keats
No. 2602: In the city
You are invited to submit a poem in praise of urban living (16 lines maximum). Entries to ‘Competition 2602’ by 25 June or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.
Also in Society
Also by Lucy Vickery
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in