Spectator competition winners: a response to Kipling’s ‘If’ and other poems

In Competition No. 3273, you were invited to supply a poem addressing a well-known poem of your choice. In a keenly contested week, honourable mentions go to Robin Hill’s response to John McCrae’s 1915 rondeau ‘In Flanders Fields’ (which was rejected for publication by this magazine), Chris Ramsey and Alex Steelsmith. The winners take £20.

If you can stroke your chin for hours and hours,

While handing out your worldly ponderings

As sterling wisdom, knowledge that empowers

And truths that point you to the heart of things;

If you can make a point-blank affirmation

Then undercut it with a get-out clause,

Or downplay thought and wild imagination,

Dynamics that can open magic doors:

If you can praise the taciturn and stoic,

The spirit of the booted and the spurred,

As vital attributes of the heroic,

Yet pay your tributes to the common herd;

If you can play the trimmer, that will aid you.

The whole world will be at your beck and call.

No summit of ambition will evade you.