In Competition 2839 you were invited to submit a poem about the darker side of spring. There were references in the entry to Larkin, who could always be relied on to see the bleaker side of things (‘their greenness is a kind of grief’), as well as to Eliot and Thomas Edward Brown. There were also nice echoes of Ogden Nash and Wordsworth.
Nicholas Holbrook and Josephine Boyle were unlucky losers and I liked Ray Kelley’s closing couplet: ‘It’s not by mere coincidence that vernal/ Rhymes so immaculately with infernal.’ The winners, printed below, earn £25 each. Bill Greenwell takes the extra fiver.
At night the young man’s fancy burns
With unrequited lust;
His thighs expand, his stomach churns,
He shudders with disgust —
He hates himself, he hates the scent
Of buds, the songs of birds.
With winter gone, his fast intent’s
Too terrible for words.
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