Transliterate the flow
No 4084
(contd)
Set by Tim Hopkins
You were asked to take a weighty poem of your choice and turn it into light verse

Report by Ms de Meaner
As promised last week, further winners for comp no 4084 are published here, and next week we will move on to 4086. This week's long winners get £20 each, the shorties £15, with Tesco vouchers going to: Thomas Peacock. It is with great sadness that we announce the death of Keith Norman, who died in his sleep during the night of 11 July. A comp entrant for many years (I found one from him from 1990 published in Blairway to Heaven, a compilation of NS comps from 1990-94), he had lately had even more success as a comp setter and, according to friends, "enjoyed [this] even more than winning them". It seems very odd that he was the author of the comp we inadvertently set twice. Perhaps, as another friend wrote, "someone was trying to tell us something". He will be sadly missed.

W B Yeats
He Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven
For goodness' sake, we cannot buy
those sheets on which you've had your eye,
– you know, the ones from Marks and Sparks,
or some generic retail park,
that had those shiny threads of light
but otherwise were dim as night,
I know you loved that two-tone print,
but facing facts, Jeanette, we're skint -
instead, I offer to your feet
this fragile weave, not just a sheet,
but rather vested with my dreams,
don't tread too hard, you'll tear the seams!
It may look cheap, but I've no guilt,
you won't find god in the three-ply quilt.
Thomas Peacock

Robert Frost
The Road Not Taken
In the woods, where a bridleway forked.
I chose, when a moment I'd gawked,
The pathway less trodden
As more fitting to plod on.
How'd it be if I'd t'other way walked?
Michael Brereton

W B Yeats
The Second Coming
Our age is calm and stable - not!
The clock is running down
And everything has gone to pot.
The world's turned upside down.
The girdle of the earth unzips
And spooky things pop out.
I'm thinking the apocalypse
Is what it's all about.
I get this image of the sphinx.
I don't know why I should,
But something somewhere really stinks.
It can't be something good.
Suppose the Second Coming means
Not Jesus in his glory,
But creature-feature horror scenes,
A Cronenberg-type story?
Basil Ransome-Davies

William Langland
The Vision of Piers Plowman
A drowsy young dosser called Will
Falls asleep atop some Malvern hill.
A chap called Piers Plowman
Says "I'll show you around" and
Though he does, readers understand nil.
Adrian Fry

No 4088 Recreation: dominoes
Set by Leonora Casement
An oldie. We'd like Who's Who entries for imaginary people who ought to be in the book but whom you would never wish to meet.
Max 125 words by 6 August
Email: comp@newstatesman.co.uk

* * *

This England
Each printed entry will receive
a £5 book token. Entries on a POSTCARD, please, to This England, NS, 1st Floor, Boundary House, 91-93 Charterhouse Street, London, EC1M 6HR

The right pea
Competitors from around the world descended on Witcham's village green in Cambridgeshire for the 39th annual World Peashooting Championships yesterday. Contestants shoot a pea through a tube 12 feet towards a 12-inch target, some using new hi-tech laser-guided shooters.
George Hollis, as he defended his title, said the chances of victory were "all about selecting the right pea".
Observer (Harry Glenister)

The wrong haircut
A grieving son visiting a cathedral to pray for his dead mother was thrown out and then searched by police after staff wrongly thought his shaved head meant he was a member of the BNP. Phillip Cadwallader, 43, was accosted in Blackburn Cathedral and asked to leave. The former support worker was then approached by police officers who searched his rucksack, which contained his running kit. As the cathedral offered an apology, Mr Cadwallader said: "I am very angry. The fact is I am starting to go bald so I have my hair cut short to hide that."
Daily Mail (Imogen Forster)