Jaspistos

The weather in the streets

issue 24 June 2006

In Competition No. 2448 you were invited to write a poem entitled ‘A Description of a City Shower’. The poet of rain is undoubtedly Hardy. His titles fairly drip with it — ‘A Wet August’, ‘A Drizzling Easter Morning’, ‘Rain on a Grave’ and, more to the point, ‘A Thunderstorm in Town’, which charmingly features a snatched kiss inside a hansom cab.

I can’t resist quoting the last three lines from Swift’s poem with our title:
Sweepings from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood,
Drowned puppies, stinking sprats, all drenched in mud,
Dead cats and turnip-tops come tumbling down the flood.
I expected ‘a City shower’ to be interpreted by some as a mob of unpleasant stockbrokers, and so it was. The prizewinners, printed below, get £25 each, and the bonus fiver belongs to Mary Holtby. Today, alas or hurrah, I am 79.



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