In praise of slow

In Competition No. 2489 you were invited to submit a poem with the title ‘In Praise of Slow’. In Praise of Slow is a book by Carl Honoré, a chronicler of the Slow Movement, whose philosophy is that the important things in life should not be rushed.
The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 apiece. Honoré would no doubt approve of the take-a-chill-pill spirit of Dorothy Pope, whose entry had the following footnote: ‘emails retrieved only on Sundays’. Hear, hear. The extra fiver, though, goes to Adrian Fry. The rhyme of ‘fjords’ with ‘Lords’ works well, as does the teasing reference to Auden’s ‘Night Mail’; Fry’s expansive ‘glacial pace’ contrasting with Auden’s careering rhythm.

Now settle; be at leisure and let’s sing, adagio,
Of branchline trains and Henry James and all things that are slow:
Of Ibsen plays, bygone Sundays, of elephants and snails
And the reassuring glacial pace beloved of Royal Mail.

Take an unhurried amble through everything sedate;
Poets intoning their own verse or Beckett’s tramps’ long wait,
The strange tectonic forces that carve canyons and fjords
Or the mull of legislation as it passes through the Lords.

In an age of cold alacrity, how can a man not warm
To those things that let life linger, to longueurs in all their forms?
Oh give me five-day cricket tests and arthouse cinema
And a ride on Shank’s pony over any motor car.

Oh, never press fast forward, only seek to pause
For, as a pint of Guinness ripens only if correctly poured,
So life acquires a savour just so long as you can bear
Residing as a tortoise in a time contrived for hares.
Adrian