[Peter Wyton]

I'm reconsidering 'eccentricities', John - and Jerome, thank you. If it's elvers yer after...(although not in the Citizen)

THE ELVER RUN


Laid off corn-portering at Gloucester dock,
with no more work in sight for anyone,
we got a boat at very-late-o’clock
and went to Longney for the elver run.

A grumpy water bailiff took our names,
bobbing around upon the Severn spate,
told us he’d sabotage our little games,
hauled us before Whitminster magistrate.

They’re country gentry on the Bench down there,
living at places like ‘The Lodge’, ‘The Court’, ‘The Hall’.
Landowners who make plain that they don’t care
for city hoi-polloi like us at all.

Elvering’s never been a sin before.
It’s always been a working person’s perks.
My gran, in service forty years or more,
never saw elvers eaten by rich jerks.

There’s not much money in it, heaven knows.
That’s why the upper classes have ignored
them all these years, until uprose
something called the Severn Fisheries Board.

They’ve dug up Acts which parliament passed
as long ago as Henry Tudor’s times.
So now the likes of us are being harassed
for what some fat aristocrat called crimes!

The Chairman said the notices were clear.
We claimed that we were all illiterate.
He ruled, with a most unbecoming sneer,
Our defence (and us) as illegitimate.

He fined us all, with costs. We couldn’t pay.
They marched us off in cuffs to Gloucester gaol,
for seven days hard labour anyway.
That treadmill fairly makes your muscles wail.




And then, of course, they had a second thought.
The Act got an amendment, so I’m told,
and things went back to being as they ought
to have been, if I may make so bold.

To top it all, the elvers got the hump,
though no one ever really figured why
they decided the Severn was a dump,
yet now you mostly find them up the Wye!

[Spindleshanks]

If you have read The Pongo Papers by Lord "Bosie" Douglas, this will need no further explanation, save to say that the Spangled Drongo (true!) is an Australian bird. If you haven't read it and The Duke of Berwick, you should.

http://www.archive.org/stream/pongop...giala_djvu.txt

The Drongo's Reply

Lord Bosie’s Cormorant is undepressed
By seventeen successive days of rain?
Well, let his genial humour try the strain
of countless years without. Lord, may his nest
forever and eternally be blest
with shaglets, brood on brood, an endless chain.
Sir, pray the sun may never fry their brain
and may it shine politely where they rest.

The birds of Oz enjoy the gentle blast
of summers that make hills of iron wilt,
where only mad dogs venture out by day
and Englishmen retire to mansions built
round indoor pools. The endless summers past
would put your genial shags right off their lay.

oOOo

[Martin Elster]

What You Have Built

The surface of my flesh is undepressed,
although a dog has bitten me. Cold rain
can’t make me shiver. I will never strain
my heart ascending steps. No organs nest
inside my body cavities. I’m blest
with powers no man enjoys. The steady chain
of thoughts that flow through what you call my “brain”
makes Einstein look retarded. I don’t rest.

Your rocket vehicles routinely blast
me far beyond the moon. I do not wilt
from ultraviolet rays. Don’t breathe. Someday
(quite soon) I’ll replicate. What you have built
will use you. You’ll be haunted by your past —
an end that even I cannot allay.

[Roger Slater]

My Lay

Undepressed
rain
can't strain
the nest
God blest.
Chain
my brain
to rest.

No blast
shall wilt
the day
God built,
though past.
So goes my lay.

[Martin Elster]

Brilliant, Roger! A song with very short lines.

[Martin Elster]

The Future?

The army of Earth’s bugs is undepressed,
even after radioactive rain
deluged the land, and the most deadly strain
of plague was on the loose to enter, nest
inside defenseless people. We were blest
to live. A few of you had cracked the chain
of gravity, flew off, using your brain,
while most of you have since been laid to rest.

The attribute that helped us beat the blast —
unbeatable prolificness. To wilt
is human. That is what you’ve done. Today
we live in every structure you had built.
The days of man’s supremacy are past,
and not because of all the eggs we lay.

[Jerome Betts]

These bouts rimes exert an almost sinister control in the writing, a bit like the feeling in the unexpected spec fic from Martin Elster ('What You Have Built'- ingenious!) but take you into strange places with Spangeld Drongos (really?), eagles and pesticides, sneezes,, turkeys, doom and decay.

Peter, glad to hear the elvers patronise my river, the Wye ,now, even if it renders a squib called 'Elverse' beginning 'In elvertime at Glevum' obsolete.

Final version, I hope, of the BR piece below

Bouts rimés

I’ve joined a bank. I’m undepressed
By failing wit or falling rain
As former fellow-rhymers strain
For feathers fit to line a nest
By cash and critics’ kudos blest!

Thank God, I’ve lost that ball and chain,
From scansion's fetters freed my brain.

Let others write, my pen will rest
From odes whose flowers my rivals blast,
Or Muses, mocking, cause to wilt,
Deadlines that poison half the day
And literary castles never built!

With verse, dear ladies, in the past,
My bonus at your feet I lay.

[Spindleshanks]

John, a question: is there a limit on the number of entries each entrant can submit?

Peter

[Roger Slater]

Remaining undepressed
in a world of clouds and rain
is not a great big strain
if you have a warm, dry nest.
But everyone's not blest.
The lowest on the chain
have sorrow on the brain
and cannot know such rest.
They reel with every blast,
their soggy spirits wilt,
they forfeit every day
what their yesterdays had built
in some far distant past
wherein their comfort lay.

[John Whitworth]

No, Spindleshanks, I don't think so. As many as you like What I do when I submit more than one poem is to use a pseudonym - Fergus Pickering or Phoebe Flood - though of course you have to make sure the Oldie has your proper name and address or your cheque will be uncashable. Though I suppose if you were to endorse the cheque on the back with your pseudonym then it would be OK.