Show time | 13 June 2013

In Competition 2801 you were invited to rewrite, in pompous and prolix style, any well-known simple poem.
 
Space is on the tight side so, pausing only to congratulate and commiserate with the longer-than-usual list of those who narrowly missed out — Mae Scanlan, Mary Holtby, Nigel Stuart, George Simmers, Rob Stuart, Ray Kelley, Adrian Fry (‘Jack Sprat possessed a remarkable antipathy to the consumption of adipose matter’) and Robert Schechter (‘This Be Not Standard Metrical Prosody’), take a bow — it’s over to the stellar prizewinners below, who earn £25 each.
 
Chris O’Carroll takes £30 for his elaboration on Ogden Nash’s four-line reflection on the best tool for ice-breaking (‘Candy is dandy…’).
 

Confections clad in chocolate (dark or milk),
A-shimmer with the glossy sheen of silk
Around some creamy, crisp or chewy filling,
Are treats with which to win treats still more
thrilling.
Nestled in niches in a gilt-trimmed box
They woo seductively. Candy unlocks
The heart and loins to which your own aspire.
Its flavours are prime fuel for carnal fire.
 
But beverages born of distillation
Are finer sovereign aids to copulation.
The merest modicum of rum or gin
Conduces to the mood you want her in,
While little more than a soupçon of whiskey
Suffices as a dose to get her frisky.
When one’s objective is to be embraced,
Sweets for finesse, John Barleycorn for haste.
Chris O’Carroll
 
A sad lament in poesy I tender,
A melancholy song in sorrow sung
Of one, an infant, feminine by gender,
Upon whose brow, betwixt her eyebrows, hung
A forelock drooping like a question mark
Inverted — upside down; and juxtaposed,
As pleasure is to pain, or light to dark,
So were her ways— one moment in the throes
Of disobedience beyond the ken
Of human comprehension, like some wild,
Unmanageable animal — and then
Reversion to behaviour meek and mild;
Thus can vicissitude confuse and vex
The soul should vice and virtue intertwine,
As when an infant of the fairer sex
Acts dual parts — now devilish, now divine.