Pagan prayer

In Competition No. 2470 you were invited to offer a votive poem to a pre-Christian deity.

Venus, take my votive glass:
Since I am not what I was,
What from this day I shall be,
Venus, let me never see.

Matthew Prior’s 18th-century prayer by a fading beauty is hard to beat, but Ezra Pound comes close with his unexpectedly charming poem, ‘The Lake Isle’ (is he having a go at Yeats?), which opens:

O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of
thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little
tobacco-shop…

The Golden Calf rewards its worshippers as follows: £25 each to five of the prizewinners printed below, and £30 to Virginia Price Evans, who prays as if she really means it.

Ishtar of Assyria,
Give me vengeance on that exiled band
Of Hebrews and send them back to their land —
They’re sowing hysteria.

My man has left me —
It’s all their fault, those wretched Jews,
For spreading their poison, the evil news
Of a god who’s holy.