COMPETITION
Unheroics
Jaspistos
In Competition No. 1533 you were asked to treat some trivial domestic action mock-heroically, in the metre and manner of Pope.
The Genial Liquor, decently pour'd out, To the admiring Guests is dealt about.
There's the 18th century at its flattest Nahum Tate, who rewrote King Lear with a happy ending and earned a place in Pope's Dunciad. Now for the Master:
From silver Spouts the grateful liquors glide, While China's Earth receives the smoking Tide.
How marvellously the second line conjures up not merely the poured coffee but a cataract on the Yangtze! Among the hard- luckers this week were D. E. Poole, Katie Mallett, John Sweetman, Basil Ransome-Davies, Noel Petty and Gerard Benson, whose single line describing the serving of a boiled egg 'Attended by a tiny Alp of salt' had the true Papal magic. The winners printed below have £15 each, and the bonus bottle of Tokay Pinot Gris, donated by Atkinson Baldwin and Co. Ltd, St Mary's House, 42 Vicarage Cres- cent, London SW11, goes to Paul Griffin.
Before his eyes a woolly dish is laid, The bleating product of an ancient trade, Slaughtered, dismembered, and by aproned priests From icy temples sold for solemn feasts. He takes the knife, to Heaven directs a prayer, And eyes the sacrifice recumbent there. Along the blade, paternal fingers feel The mortal keenness of the sharpened steel; And those who watch fall silent in amaze To see the dreadful business he essays. He cuts a slice, and, suddenly afraid, Feels on his shrinking flesh the errant blade. His consort rises, seeing, with a roar, Her snowy cloth defiled with human gore. The deadly flood she struggles to assuage, Half moved by pity, and half choked with rage.
(Paul Griffin) The conscious match is to the gas applied, And there the pan with water's set to ride. Some set the eggs within the water cold; By others they're in boiling water rolled.
De gustibus non disputandum est, But with the Swiss I own the second best.
The china shepherdess holds in her hand Time's double glass of vacancy and sand.
The grains within the timer softly sift And tell by full descent the time to lift Out of immersion and in cuplets lay The ovoid offering of the opening day. (George Moor) No menial household task on bended knee With brush and pan demeans Felicity; A mighty force obeys her little hand, And battle rages at her soft command. With gentle touch she guides the roaring beast Whose jaws distended crave the wonted feast. In all directions as he sweeps the field His puny victims to their victor yield; And dust and cake-crumbs, cotton ends and fluff And toenail clippings haste his maw to stuff. Not Fido's fleas nor pampered Pussy's hairs Rest undetected 'neath my lady's chairs, But like those ships Charybdis sucked below To their dark doom they unresisting go. Each nook and cranny his keen breath explores And renders spotless carpets, rugs and floors. (0. Smith) Lit by the standard lamp's expensive ray, Janet and John review their stressful day: A mild restorative, they're both agreed, Is just what the physician has decreed. John, picking up a fine Benares tray, To the plush kitchen makes his nonchalant way, And there he places cubes of glittering ice In crystal vessels of enormous price. Among the gin and vodka he can see A Single Malt of faultless pedigree; He takes the flask and, horror to behold, Pours on the ice the flood of liquid gold! Oblivious of the crime they've perpetrated, John and his pretty spouse are quite elated, And as their glasses to their lips they raise Janet says, 'Bottoms up!', John, 'Happy days!'
(Robert Baird), Attend, Electra's Sylphs, on muffled wing! Your Mistress' power I am charged to sing. While cherubs hide, at apron-strings to tug, And zephyrs shelter, Father wires a plug. Three strands there lie in serpentine array, Destined to part, and then condemned to splay The Blue, the Green-and-Yellow and the Brown By the persuasive screw shall be kept down. But hold! At Anarch's raging he succumbs, And what were nimble fingers now are thumbs. The hues, familiar once, deceive and switch, And Father can't remember which is which. For thou, Europa, whom twelve states obey, Who rule by Right and Sub-Sub-Section A, Mast banished Red, protecting us from shocks. We bow, of course, but can't connect the Box.
(Dennis McDonnell)
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