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.

And yet somehow it’s all conditional.

Basil Ransome-Davies/‘If’

Dear William, I’m the Highland Lass

who sang as you looked on

and sat upon your poet’s arse

in shade upon the lawn

and made as if I were a bird

who chirped the whole day long,

and listening, your heart was stirred

to hear my warbled song.

Just for the record, William, I

was working for my bread,

and sang so that I would not cry

or wish that I were dead.

To you, it seems, I was a prop,

not someone’s wife or daughter.

You wrote. Not once, though, did you stop

to offer me some water.

Robert Schechter/‘The Solitary Reaper’

I, too, have seen thee oft — a cunning gaze

lingering too long as I, relaxing sprawl

carefree and confident. The light wind plays

a rondo through my hair. And you? For all

your fancy’s phrasing drugs are on your mind,

and drink: go press that cider on your own.

Keep those last oozings to yourself; your stale

romantic leerings merely underlined

your stalker-instincts, voyeur, and your tone.