In Competition No. 3022 you were invited to compose a safe poem that Boris Johnson could have on hand to quote from when out in the field.
The recent kerfuffle caused by the Foreign Secretary’s murmured quotation of a few lines of Kipling’s poem ‘Mandalay’ during a visit to Shwedagon Pagoda in Myanmar led me to wonder whether it might be wise, given the ever-increasing number of no-go areas when it comes to subject matter, to challenge you to fashion an all-purpose poem unlikely to offend.
Barbara Jones’s Blakean-flavoured entry — ‘And did my feet in foreign clime/ Trample on sensitivities?’ — caught my attention, as did Tim Raikes’s patter song. But they were outstripped by the winners below, who take £25 each. The extra fiver is D.A. Prince’s.
When you require a few bon mots about you
(Let’s not be If-men — life’s too bloody short)
Look for a lingua franca when men doubt you.
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