Nonsensical

Competition No. 2520: On the road
You are invited to submit a poem entitled ‘Meditation on the M25’ (maximum 16 lines). Entries to ‘Competition 2520’ by 8 November or email lucy@spectator.co.uk.

In Competition 2517 you were invited to submit a nonsense poem with the first line ‘They went to see in a Sieve, they did…’, the opening to Edward Lear’s ‘The Jumblies’.
This was an opportunity to leave reason behind and to make merry with verbal inventiveness, incongruous juxtapositions and distorted spelling. One of appealing things about nonsense verse is that the surreal, topsy-turvy worlds conjured up have their own internal logic, and I especially liked entries that managed to get this across.
Commendations go to Josh Ekroy and Dorothy Pope, and thanks to Martin Parker, who, with one eye on future bonus fiver-winning opportunities, did away with some of his rival compers, casting them out to sea in the holey vessel and consigning them to a watery grave.
The winners, printed below, get £30 each, and W.J. Webster (who was spared by Mr Parker) gets £35.

They went to sea in a sieve, they did,
With never a moment’s doubt:
‘It’s better by far,’ they cried, ‘than a boat —
If water gets in we’ll still stay afloat
Because it’ll drain straight out.’
They fitted their oar (they’d only brought one)
And started to row, turn about,
But hard as they tried, the sieve just went round
With a gargling, gurgling, guggling sound,
Like a pig with a pea in its snout.
And though they still strove with might and with main
The tide took a turn and ran them aground
So they found themselves back where they’d started again,
Which proved, they declared, that the Earth must be round.
Oh, what greater adventure could life ever give
Than going to sea, as they did, in a sieve?
W.J. Webster