Peccavi

In Competition No. 2377 you were invited to supply a poem describing your regrettable failure to keep a recent New Year’s resolution. ‘Indeed, indeed, repentance oft before/ I swore — but was I sober when I swore?’ asks FitzGerald’s Rubaiyat, or as old Ovid put it, ‘Video meliora, proboque; deteriora sequor.’ Among your mainly banal broken resolutions concerning drinking, smoking, dieting and fitness, it was a relief to find some more unusual aspirations: Paul Griffin resolved to ‘see the meaning in these winter days’, Josh Ekroy to be late for every date, and Shirley Curran to put the cat out before going to bed. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, but Keith Norman gets an extra fiver for excellence.

Last year, as all my deadlines loomed
With tasks not yet begun,
Oh how I cursed the lack of time
In which to get them done!

I swore that in the coming year
I’d not leave things so late.
My