Comp. 3441 invited you to use the opening of Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Trees’ as a starting point for your own. Deserving of a mention are D.A. Prince, Sylvia Fairley, Basil Ransome-Davies, Elizabeth Fry, David Blakey and Nick Syrett, whose second verse I enjoyed a lot:
How self-possessed they are, the drug
Of springtime setting all to naught;
There’s something just a little smug
About some trees, I’ve often thought.
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The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said .
Sergeant Prescott phoned me: ‘Chief,
We’ve found the vicar, and she’s dead.’
The snowdrops fleck the river’s marge,
Like a secret that I almost knew.
I said: ‘Make this priority, Sarge,
Set the team hunting for a clue.’
Wood anemones dot the ground,
As though spring’s almost taking root.
The sergeant rings to say; ‘We’ve found
The imprint of a size nine boot.’
I hear a chiffchaff’s early call
Like dawn that almost breaks the dark
I tell the sergeant: ‘After all,
You’d best arrest the parish clerk.’
George Simmers
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
I listen close with lowered head
To steal their meaning, like a thief.
‘We bud for poets just like you,’
They say in whispers soft and clear,
‘We do it always, once a year
To show that life is made anew,
‘To lift your introspective verse
From girls and death and silly things
And fill you with the joys of spring
And stop you writing something worse.’
So gentle was their kind reproach
I vowed right then I must abstain
From sadness (every poet’s bane):
Today, at least, it won’t encroach.
Joseph Houlihan
‘The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said…’
Perhaps if Larkin lived today
He’d couch things in another way:
What he had thought was hopeful spring
Has turned into a different thing,
Akin to crawling underneath
The fetid mess of Emin’s bed.
It’s strange ‘afresh’ seems bogus now
That everything has gone to pot.
In view of current world events,
Might frowsty Philip’s preference
For ‘Better Fitting Metaphor’
Become instead that sycamore?
Its blasted stump conveying how
Each year man doubles down on grot.
Richard Spencer
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said
As budding poets leap from bed
To tackle the Spectator brief.
The first line comes or almost comes
Since what they write, or try to write,
Seems far too grave or far too trite
And leaves them twiddling their thumbs.
The rhymes, each one a muddled mesh,
When judged are almost sure to lose –
So, desperate not to fail, they choose
To scrap the scripts and start afresh.
Alan Millard
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said;
Liquidity event’s ahead,
A promise of dry bark relief.
Performance indicators show
Sequential upticks in the trend;
For smooth rollout at winter’s end
As lateral branches start to grow.
Stakeholder confidence runs high;
They launch with measured risk restraint.
Mothballed assets swell and paint
New projections on the sky.
All target outcomes are achieved,
Performance metrics satisfied;
Yet nothing here has been implied –
The trees were never self-conceived.
Ralph Goldswain
The trees are coming into leaf.
Oh yes, I think you might have said.
The branches always seem to spread.
Let’s cut them if they give you grief.
So is it pruning time again?
I feel too old! Yes I do too –
To keep the garden looking new
Begins to go against the grain.
Yet unresting still we thresh
And chop the thickness as we may.
We’re not dead yet, I’m glad to say.
Begin afresh, afresh, afresh!
Liz Moore
The trees are coming into leaf
Like something almost being said,
And yet there is a kind of grief
For autumn’s leaves will float down dead.
I missed the Swinging Sixties – just;
Now youth is gone and all its thrills.
Though spring is here I’m only left
With Wordsworth’s dinky daffodils.
Words I find fall mostly short,
A sort of fumbling bumbling grope
At what we see and mean to say –
They slip away like bathroom soap.
I am Hull’s librarian,
And though I’m not a happy man
Someone somewhere may read and say,
‘At least his fuckin’ poems scan!’
Mike Gower (‘Larkin’s Lament’)
No. 3444: Take heed
You’re invited to submit a Hilaire Belloc-style cautionary tale for our times (150 words max). This has been done before, but it was years ago and the world has changed enough for another round. Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 1 April.
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