Competition entries

To enable competitors to economise on postage, entries for one or more weeks of the competition and crossword may be posted together under one cover addressed 'Competition Entries' provided each entry is enclosed in a separate marked envelope.

The War Photographer The summer rains came early in that year, Inundating 'Nam as rice fields disappeared She had nice arms, a look in dark brown eyes Reminding rue of Carmen as I watched her there.

Two choppers came in low and manic ears Were buried in red hands, wet hands. Crimpy As an institution, not a sin;

Cream skin was cold, brown eyes Were still, and cameras in the bag.

Maine cars are glistening in the sun, And does man care? Is Cinerama's gloss The limit of his knowing? I can smear My pictures over half the world and still Be sure that no man cries a protest, Raises Cain, reams gushing from the Press, For this sweet, honeyed face set in a scream.

(Paul Wigmore) A young he-stoat — do you not know that he Can be as hungry toothed as any man? — To cross the road one evening began. The sun had set, too dark it was to see, Therefore he stood at times, because his mate Had once been rash, and so to death had gone. A toad now crawled beside him, whereupon The pair then ventured over, tempting Fate.

Far in the distance came a swelling buzz That grew to sudden roar — and so the toads. And he-stoat, both, were squashed upon the road.

The car deals death as swift as hatchet does. 0 that some pen would haste to do and write The too sad Ode, so that no more would any Jehu-ites fill the roads with deaths too many, And creatures only cross at dead of night!

(Joyce Johnson) Death on the Nile By one lone star I row on silent oar.

There's oil astern; ahead, an islet or Some alien sort of a craft: it is not real!

But hark: a lone sitar; as if on stolen air Its sounds are lost in darkness. It came from that stone lair.

My mind is on alert as lights through bars of iron steal.

To Ra's Nile delta one's trail has winding led, To Egypt, and not Israel, the Orientals fled. That liar's note in Reno: a list of names he gave — My relations — now a tomb they share, or a silent grave.

But lo, ix nears, that sombre isle. No rat climbed that lone stair So silent, or a ghost. I do not stir. Alone. Take care!

With petrol, rag and lighted match, 0 silent Ra, take heed;

For so I learnt from Molotov: I let arson do the deed. (Andrew C. Slim) An Epistle from a Poet to the World In the small hours, when tiles, pane, ceiling drip, 1 pen my lines, pate furrowed with pursed lip, A tense hand too, for I really like to grip My stile (a pen to you, sir!) when I write Apt, senile compositions half the night, Then stack them in near piles — I mean by a pile Ten as a rule — ready for me to file

The following day. When my muse, anti-sleep,

Pines late, I count my feet instead of sheep. SE Nepal it was, with the Alpine set, Where I first learnt for rhymes to cast a net. I lapse occasionally, but all who climb Parnassus must pay penalties for the crime Of hubris. Like a Nile spate, I flow on. Vraiment le poke, comme le pain, est bon!

(Neil Tapes)