Competion Epigrammatic
Epigrammatic
Lucy Vickery presents this week's Competition
In Competition No. 2690 you were invited to invited to submit quatrains reflecting on current events in the Middle East in the style of Edward FitzGerald/Omar Khayyam.
FitzGerald is, of course, master of the beautifully turned aphoristic phrase. And, as Cedric Watts points out in his introduction to the Wordsworth Classics edition of the Rubaiyat, though he makes it looks effortless the rhyme scheme he uses in his translation — mostly AABA, though occasionally AAAA— is difficult to maintain; especially, as he does so fluently, for stanza after stanza. So the bar was set high. Frank McDonald triumphs this week and bags the bonus fiver. His fellow winners get £25 each.
Awake! For out of desolation’s night
The voice of hope that put the Shah to flight
Is heard across the land where pharaohs ruled,
And liberty decrees: ‘Let there be light.’
The shifting sands in time’s eternal glass
See princes fall and tyrant pleasures pass;
One force that seemed immovable is gone,
Another rises from the seething mass.
Fate’s moving finger writes and who will say
What good or bad will blossom from today?
Suffice that change has come, and change is hope,
And for an hour let freedom’s children play.
The Nile still flows and floods and Allah keeps
The secrets of tomorrow while man weeps.
The portals through which Rameses has passed
Care not if freedom flourishes or sleeps.
Frank McDonald
‘Tyrant!’ Protesters cry. ‘For long we bore
Your Rule, when you ruled out the Rule of Law.
Robed in Dishonour now you must depart,
And once departed, may return no more.’
From land to land Rebellion spreads apace;
The hated Despot’s drummed out in Disgrace;
And Lo! rejoicing Citizens believe
Another Despot will not take his Place.
Insurgents thrust their Fists into the Sky
And then into the Dust, when Bullets fly.
Although World Leaders damn the Slaughter, they
As impotently move as you or I.
Never is Blood more piteously shed
Than when, by warring Power-seekers led,
Brother fights Brother. How can Hassan bear
The Guilt of being alive when Ghassan’s dead?
Ray Kelley
Long Years in Thrall to the Mysterious East,
Imagination shared the Spicy Feast,
The dashing Hero, the Alluring Veil,
Nor strove to judge ’twixt Beauty and the Beast.
But now no Magic Carpet sweeps the Sky
Where Disenchanted Man has learned to Fly,
Tear off the Cloak, pack up the Royal Tent
And lay the Masquerading Stories by.
No more to Emulate the Queen of Lies,
Who Night by Night a Fresh Romance supplies —
And lives; now One may tell a Single Tale,
Adorned with Simple Truth, and lo! he dies.
Some mourn the Glories of the Past, and Some
Dream of a Grand Democracy to come,
But He whose Hand divides the Loaf of Life
Cares not who gains the Crust and who the Crumb.
Mary Holtby
The breaking news rolls in, and having rolled
Rolls on, as worse events elsewhere unfold.
The correspondent does his piece and leaves,
The story, like the bodies, now grown cold.
An expert plucked from academe describes
The subtle sociology of tribes,
With nods towards the universal fact
That power is always fuelled by threats and bribes.
Meanwhile the despots and their sundry sons
Deploy, in panic, words then gas and guns.
The moving finger writes its fateful rune
To mark who stays and kills, who cuts and runs.
The rebels cry, ‘Hurl off the shroud of night
So we may learn to live in freedom’s light!’
Brave words and braver deeds but now they’re left
To hope that may will not give way to might.
W.J. Webster
Reports like shadows fill the daily news,
Prognosticating who will win, who lose.
The reader fights with phantoms. Who can tell
Which picture, or which narrative, to choose?
Look here: the tyrant’s mad, distracted glare,
Or here: the brave souls on the streets who dare
To tramp his cardboard face into the dust
And shout the puffed-up emperor is bare.
A clairvoyant alone might understand
Who holds the cards, whose strength will rule the land,
But at the showdown who knows what may hinge
On how the generals have played their hand?
One fatal fact: the ever-unctuous West,
Playing the false friend to the world’s oppressed,
Gambled for profit on corrupt régimes
And failed its own professings’ acid test.
Basil Ransome-Davies
Another Dawn, and from another Crowd
The Siren Song of Freedom rings out loud
For those who know the time has come to wrap
Another Despot’s Evil in its Shroud.
Yet, though the Throes of infant Freedom churn,
Its Flame of Life may have but Hours to burn;
For while its Parents greet their new-born Child
Their mad-eyed Brothers smirk and wait their Turn.
And all the cheering Crowds who joined the Throng
Which broke their Chains and chanted Freedom’s Song
May find, before its Air has warmed the Sand,
The Song was but a single Stanza long.
Martin Parker
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