W.J. Webster A certain subtle, govian fellow, When asked what code name he preferred, Chose ‘hammer’ as a striking word Then made his point by adding ‘yellow’. For, emberiza citrinella Was a species badly hit When Brussels’ CAP that didn’t fit Sabotaged the hedgerow dweller: The drive to get far bigger yields Made acreage easier to combine But helped to cause a sharp decline In birds that needed hedged-in fields. The yellowhammer flies alone While some birds like to flock together: It’s glad of its distinctive feather And sings a song that’s all its own.
Alan Millard ‘A happy home of sunshine, flowers and streams,’ Wrote Clare of your abode, yet now we know That in some grim, worst-case scenario The poet’s words might be the stuff of dreams. Though prey to snakes your helpless young might be The future augurs even worse to fear As fields are ploughed and hedgerows disappear And meadows sink beneath a rising sea. Yes, doom and gloom your happy home might mar, Yet fear not yellowhammer! Cling to hope, For one who calmly claims that he can cope Whate’er befalls comes like a rising star With yellow, straw-like hair and winsome charm Who, being keen your needs to satisfy, Would sooner choose in some damp ditch to die Than fail to save your happy home from harm.
David Silverman O hail, blithe emberiza citrinella! Sing, golden-throated harbinger of doom And teach us, in the sweetest a capella, Your amber-lighted prophecies of gloom: ‘A little bit of bread and no French cheese And shortages of blushful Hippocrene! Quorn? Quinoa? Avocados? Prawns? No more!’ Each warbling warning wafting on the breeze Is waved away: ‘Worst Case is what they mean!’ But the songbird’s singing like it knows the score. O avian Cassandra! ‘Project Fear’ They call you and dismiss your baleful song, As once, beneath the topless towers of Troy All Ilium cried, the cataclysm near: ‘Enough experts — that girly swot is wrong!’ They first drive mad, whom then the Gods destroy.
Adrian Fry There are scribbles on the shell of a yellowhammer’s egg That our highest academics can’t decipher. So there came a wonk from Whitehall who believed himself insightful And to prove it claimed the pay of an adviser.
‘There are scribbles on the shell of a yellowhammer’s egg,’ He expounded, having caught the problem’s essence, ‘Which are patterns of mere pigment and not fantasy or figment Nor the smearings from the bird’s recent excrescence. Now, the scribbles on the shell of a yellowhammer’s egg, It’s been claimed, are of a script that isn’t Christian. I concede the story’s quaint, but the Devil’s work they ain’t, For the truth behind them causes greater friction. All these scribbles on the shell of a yellowhammer’s egg, It eventuates, pertain to No Deal Brexit. Though obscure and opaque, they list measures we must take If there is No Deal or is and Boris wrecks it.
D.A. Prince The yellowhammer’s small and shy, it never wants to catch the eye or let the curious-minded pry. It tries to hide.
A ‘little bit of bread’ it sings and ‘no cheese’; future sufferings are coded in its flutterings kept deep inside.
Endangered: that’s its status, so it keeps its profile very low afraid that people in the know might, if they could,
reveal how vulnerable’s its state — facing starvation, desperate. The yellowhammer knows its fate and it’s not good.
George Simmers In the Parliament of Fowls, all the girly swotty owls Are becoming hot and stressy as the politics gets messy. Who keeps on despite their clamour? Plucky little Yellowhammer.
Who’s preparing for the worst, working till he’s fit to burst, Making sure the country thrives when catastrophe arrives? He’s far away from front-bench glamour, Plucky little Yellowhammer.
Yellowhammer keeps on trying, helping Boris do-or-dying. Other birds may get all flappy, but he’s chirpy, blithe and happy — And Jacob’s there to check his grammar! Lucky little Yellowhammer!
Your next challenge is to submit a poem about Thomas Cook. Please email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 23 October.
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