Competition No 3876
Set by Will Bellenger, 4 April
You were asked for a Bob Dylan version of Dylan Thomas or a Dylan Thomas version of Bob Dylan.
Report by Ms de Meaner
This was one of the hardest comps ever. At one point I had a double-page spread of possible winners. Hon menshes to Bill Greenwell, Josh Ekroy (for Dylan Thomas's version of "Leopardskin Pillbox Hat"!), Shirley Curran, D A Prince, David Silverman ("To begin at the beginning:/It is jingle-jangle morning in Llareggub's empty streets./The babies are sleeping, but you are not sleepy/ And there is no place you are going to") and Basil Ransome-Davies. I could go on. Most of you had brilliant lines that I could easily mention, if I had the room. £25 and the Tesco vouchers to John O'Byrne; the others get £20. Well done.
"A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"
To begin at the beginning:
Hush, my darling young one, my blue-eyed sonorous son. Hear the sluicing sound of the stairrod rain, hardfalling fullhard rain, slapping on the twelve misted, cloudmounted mountains, the six crooked ribbonrevealing highways, the seven sad sawdustbegotten forests, the dozen dead saltshaken heavens-hydrated seas.
You can hear the hard rain falling, and it's going to continue to fall, falling hardrained, fullfallen.
Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed lensluciferous son? Did you see the route of a grievous graveyard, with wolveswild, bleeding hammers, tenthousand talkers' talking tongues, whispering worldlywise and nobody listening but laughing lamentedly?
Listen. You alone can hear the fall of the drenched poet in the gutter, under the heartheaving hard-milked wood.
John O'Byrne
"Under Milk Wood"
How many cobbles can night stalk down
Before the sleepers moan?
Listen, how many seas must a Blind Cat sail
Before sleepin' savagely an' alone?
Listen, how many long-dead sailors must speak
Before they're nibbled to the bone?
The Arethusa, my friend, is bobbin' in
the sea,/The Arethusa, etc
How many bards can praise Donkey Down
Before they're finally heard?
Listen, how much jelly and poetry can he donate
Before they're no longer shared?
Listen, how much Bach can one wife bear
Pretending this organ she preferred?
The Arethusa, etc
How many pints can one man down
Before the onset of cirrhosis?
Listen, how many characters can one play have
Before you call them voices?
Listen, how many widows' weeds will it take
To heed doomed lifestyle choices?
The Arethusa, etc
John Griffiths-Colby
"Blowin' In the Wind"
How many grey, greasy gravelly roads
From the miserable mizzle-drenched mountain-top
To the dust-dry, dreary, deserted dry-dock of delirium
Must a man make his own by the tramp of his foot
And the bootless, fruitless tread of his soleless boot
Before the force that through the green pews drives
The flagging spirit of his mouldering Bible
Black with mildew, black as a burnt-out mill - Diw,
Diw! - wakes from its slobbering, spittle-spotted sleep
And coughs up words enough to call him Man?
There's your answer, boyo:
Look behind you - it's only wind.
Patrick Hughes
No 3879 Set by Brendan J O'Byrne
"If you can be summed up in a paragraph, there's something wrong with you" - Victoria Coren in the Observer. So let's sum up some people we've all heard of.
Max 150 words by 5 May. E-mail: comp@newstatesman.co.uk
