Lucy Vickery presents the latest competition
In Competition No. 2674 you were invited to submit an elegy on the death of Paul the Octopus, who died peacefully in his tank last month aged a respectable two-and-a-half. Paul was catapulted from the obscurity of an aquarium in Oberhausen, Germany to international celebrity when he accurately predicted the outcome of several World Cup matches.
Commendations to Jerome Betts and Bill Greenwell. The bonus fiver is Noel Petty’s. His fellow winners get £25 each.
Great Paul, the psychic octopus, is dead,
His wisdom lost, locked in that mighty head.
Eight times his art was tried, eight times it
passed,
Thus proving that the future is precast.
The ancient riddles yielded to his skill —
Ones of Determinism and free Will
That had eluded Aristotle’s clutch
And bothered Calvin (though perhaps not much).
But here’s the irony: in praising Paul
We miss the Truth he laboured to install.
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