In Comp. 3377 you were invited to write a version of ‘Ozymandias’ for the future. (The original, which obviously is for all time, arose from a contest between Shelley and Horace Smith to write a poem with that title.) The idea was to elicit responses to the US election, and the President-elect does feature heavily, but a desert of oblivion interrupted only by stone Trumps seemed too unremitting. The mood could be downbeat, so for some light relief here’s a snatch of Janine Beacham’s entry:
‘My name is Kardashian, Queen of Bling:
Look on my bod, yearn for my derriere!’
No followers remain. No downloads play,
Despite research, high tech, we’ve not one prayer
Of knowing what this colossus had to say.
Also deserving of a mention, among others: Alex Steelsmith, Sylvia Fairley, Mark Brown, Bob Newman, Mike Morrison, Hamish Wilson, D.A. Prince. The winners receive £25.
On a virtual tour of the dead zone
I connected with a user who said
He’d seen the ancient carved artefact known
As The Orange Face, portal that once led
To a primitive database, here weathered away.
A pedestal stood nearby, an antique glyph
Engraved thereon, in order to convey
Perhaps what the sculptor had not made clear,
The authenticity of that famed quiff –
‘Look here you jerks, it really was my hair.’
But that bouffant that has passed into myth
Had eroded away, not a strand there,
Just an empty mask on a monolith.Sue Pickard
I met a reveller from an eastern land
Who said – ‘A really very swollen head
Rests on the shifting underwater sand,
Through the lips of which, upon the ocean bed,
Irradiated fishlings pass. Unmanned,
The plastic hair yet shaved upon each side,
The parting fixed, the eyeballs both obese,
He seems to greet the sea with useless pride:
I signed the pact that kept the world at peace.|
These words, unheard, are carved upon a void.
Respected Comrade! Leader still Supreme!
Your dumpy body’s blown to smithereens,
Washed by a blowsy tide in constant gloom –
Who knows what KIM is, what it really means?’Bill Greenwell
I met a traveller from a western land
Which now lies waste and barren, and he said:
‘Nothing remains there, just a torn red cap
Blown by the winds. The letters on it read:
“MAGA”. The word is sadly meaningless.’
He told me he had met the self-same scene
When in the east. Just desert, dust and waste,
And rubble, where great cities once had been.
‘A scrap of poster found I, blowing free.
It seemed to bear an image and a name.
Cyrillic. First a P, then U, and T…
A small fragment of newsprint fluttered there
With words about a rapid peace treaty
Drifting upon the radioactive air.’Brian Murdoch
I met an alien from a distant star
who said: Upon a planet, rusty-red,
stood two great X’s, once seen from afar,
now toppled and to wind erosion fed.
Between them, on a platform sits a car,
its storm-scoured carcass pitted, dull and grey,
while looming high above this desolate scene,
carved on a rockface, watching day-on-day,
a countenance stares down, its smug veneer
surveying not what is, but what has been.
Its holographic rendering you’ll hear
and see, dad-dancing, speaking to a crowd
long absent, boasting: ‘Mars holds naught to fear.
It’s mine! It’s ours! Mankind cannot be cowed!’Paul A. Freeman
Report received from Cyborg XM2
On reconnaissance in decontaminated zone:
‘Located long, large channel, unsure what to do;
Took decision to send in surveillance drone.
Channel proceeds from south sector through
To middle zone (still contaminated) then
Ends in ruin and rubble, greatly overgrown.
The drone recorded a rusted metal sign. When
Analysed its words were in archaic Anglish
Saying: “Here lies the foundation stone
For this mighty undertaking to vanquish
All inequality and imbalance in our nation,
And level up those (north of Birmingham) who languish
By bringing all to their proper station.”
The sign ends with the indecipherable phrase “HS2”.
Charges have been laid and primed for detonation.’Joseph Houlihan
I once adventured to a No-Man’s-Land,
Of shuttered shops (except for Betfred), ill-built flats,
Addicts in doorways, skips alive with rats.
One building there I couldn’t understand,
It had the tall remains of dignity,
But Time had left it crumbling, overgrown.
I made out letters on the pockmarked stone
They spelt out NEGIE LIBRA, bafflingly.
Why build so grand a building here,
Among this hopelessness and grime and sleaze,
Where truants do the drug deliveries?
I asked a wild-eyed man who waved his beer
At a passing squad-car, shouting; he said: ‘I hear
It was for books. But who needs books round here?’George Simmers
I met a wanderer by a ruined wall
Who said: ‘A sandstone bust now blanched and bleached,
Detached from one who once stood proud and tall
Lies in the debris where this wall is breached,
A bust whose scowl and pouting lips revealed
The arrogance of someone born to lead,
To be his country’s saviour and its shield
And etched upon his brow these words you’ll read:
“My name is Donald Trump, oh yes my friends,
Look on my face and be inspired with awe!
I did no wrong and hence made no amends,
But rightly spurned the venal rule of law!”
There, in the dust, this crumbling bust now lies
Where once, it seems, there lived more fools than wise.’Alan Millard
No. 3380: we go again
You are invited to submit predictions for the year 2025 in verse (16 lines maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 26 December. (NB: no. 3379 should have asked for the usual 16 lines/150 words.)
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