Poetry competition winners and runners up 37

JLJLJAN ABRAHAM

The bridge

Strung like a pole between two hunters A bridge, the only one hereabouts, And the beams, lichen swarmed but steady Over the river’s cradle.

One might have guessed a secret place, But rats, owls have swallowed Its secrets And men have sucked their weary smoke Into the even veins, dried, heavy, exposed On the carcase choked in the spinning of Feds, Its stubborn back tamed, the spine shod to a path.

The labourer

Can you see him? Still in the fields, He works like a thrush at its song Until the light moves on; And it is his hands asleep, his mind Tossing in the field’s sheets. Until the dark fires rush to smoke. Then it is the plough tapping his shoulder And the furrows tearing their stitches, Lapwings sown into the green brimming air, And the blade’s clatter stumbling like a child.

His voice cracks, renews and will break Tomorrow; by night an old man’s That lies down where it is.

M. M. WHITTLE

Cancer

Hidden under wool and waterproofs I guard it in my breast; keep it close

my changeling child. always

38 Critical Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 2

As Protector and Provider, necessary as a mother,

I am fulfilled.

Filtering through my paper body

it surprises me

for look, so young yet

as healthily it multiplies at twice the speed of sin.

I give it lots of exercise -

and lots of rest -

shoulder-high

which helps it thrive

which helps it thrive in fact

I can’t go wrong.

I’ll simply let it feed where greed festers greed fosters greed

till it turns in rebellion, heaves and vomits in my very soul. Independent.

MAlTHEW PEPPITT

Romney Marsh ’Where the sea was once it may return’, The marsh men say; Yet on that marsh and shingle outcrop where Kent denies the sea Thrive sea kale, sandwort, brookweed and A nuclear power station. Sure-footed marsh sheep pick their way to drier ground, Willows drip their greens and Yellows into dykes, And the tractor Wends its. weary way, Pursued by wireworm - scavenging Lapwing and gull.

Poetry competition 39

High above, The wide-mouthed, full-bellied, flashing Cargo planes Drone home to Ferryfield and Lympne, unloading Frontiersmen from France To drive triumphant in their Renaults through Romney, Rye and Winchelsea, as if Harold, freshly dead, still lay on Senlac hill.

The shacks of fishermen and shepherds’ huts Share the marsh with breeze-block bungalows, ‘Costa del Sols‘, ’Restawhiles’ and ‘Ocean Vistas’, Camps for holidays and weekend soldiering And a miniature railway. Rooks squabble in the wych elms High above the graveyards of wool-churches, And higher still Cables for high tension electricity Murmur, hum and buzz. Along the Royal Military Canal Cap-doffing moorhen give respectful right of way To the Queen’s swans, Observing a soldier’s sense of rank In a waterway designed to keep Napoleon out - The same Napoleon who had crossed The Rhine and Danube, but Who never knew the marsh.

JONATHAN MORRIS

Epistle to all my acquaintances

It has come to my notice that none of you comprehend the human specimen who confronts you. This is not unreasonable as I am but a minor character in everyone’s life but my own and in thata hero of mind alone, whilst the brain rejects all aspirations for anything more than existence. Do not waste your adjectival psychoanalytical phrases upon me

40 Critical Qwrterly, vol. 21, no. 2

for there is nothing to analyse in a vacuum save its creation and that birth is not to be found by observation. Do not consider what I mumble to be of significance, of truth, or created of any inner conviction for there is none. All is produced for self self advancement/mockery/parody and is not (fit?) for the consumption of the general observer. Consider instead that knowledge does not heal faults but may scar when it is of faults not present, that the self determined life style is one answerable to its creator not cohabitants and that a pocket handkerchief may be contemplated, but for comprehension it must be unfolded before the nose is blown.

R. A. H. BURGE

The compromise

This is what keeps me going, drives me on, the half-formed image of something beyond everyday existence, a country of lethargic streams, tree-filtered sunshine, villages snug in the hollows of hills, where smoking, Jack Russells and extremists are banned. She lives there, the ever-smiling, white-clothed woman who is perfection, whose parodies I lust after. Most days I see part of her usurping a girl in the street, making me wish the bus would go slower, making me glad I walked through town.

After years lost with constant vigdance, I have every piece of the jig-saw puzzle that all have seen, but which none can do; the eyes that sparkle but the mind that hides, the mouth I see talking but cannot kiss, the vibrant flesh I watch but cannot feel. Perhaps I will learn to like Jack Russells.