In Competition No. 2388 you were invited to offer a poem expressing aversion to an object or person popularly regarded as picturesque.
Is it ironical, a fool enigma,
This sunset show?…
Is it a mammoth joke?…
These unconventional lines were written when Victoria was on the throne by T.E. Brown, best known as the author of that soppy piece ‘A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!’ Your abominations ranged far and wide — teddy bears, fluffy yellow chicks, Paris in the springtime, Princess Diana…. Mary Holtby saw the robin as ‘a Machiavellian vermicide’ and for D.H. Prince a rose was ‘only a bloody rose’. The prizewinners are printed below. Gerda Mayer gets £30 for her baby-bashing piece, the others have £25 each.
I look at them, if look I must:
I view them with benign disgust.
I see them with disguised dismay;
And do I covet them? No way!
My own would have improved the nation.
Yours
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