In Competition 2832 you were invited to compose an address to an item of food.
The assignment was inspired by Burns’s ‘Address to a Haggis’, but you were not obliged to write in his style. Albert Black went for a Kipling-Burns mash-up and other competitors drew on Shelley and Shakespeare. The winners take £25 each and Basil Ransome-Davies pockets £30.
Eggs Benedict, you pop my cork!
I’m immune to the charms of a black-buttered skate
Or a Frenchified way with roast pork.
A confit de canard is not my soul-mate —
A touch would embarrass my fork —
While lapin au cidre I candidly hate,
But I put out for you on our very first date
In that old luncheonette in New York.
In your lemony Hollandaise dress
That clung to your contours like satin or moire
You were succulence yoked with finesse,
Divine, thaumaturgic, a luminous star
Draped on bacon and toast.
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