Jag har delat ut poängen 3-2-1 i de tio heaten med "poem of the week-dikter". I ett heat blev det delad seger mellan två bidrag och i det tionde heatet lät jag alla bidragen få två poäng vardera.
Summeringen gav att The Times Literary Supplement och The Guardian båda fick 11 poäng. Men segern går till dagstidningen The Guardian eftersom de hade fler fullpoängare. Ett stort grattis till Carol Rumens som väljer ut bidragen i den välkända dagstidningen.
Jag bevakar redan hennes spalt, och jag rekommenderar mina läsare att lägga till den bland favoriterna.
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| Carol Rumens, f. 1944 poesiredaktör i The Guardian |
***
Efter poängredovisningen repriseras tre av dikterna.
Slutställning:
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***
Chrysalis, by Stanley Moss (f. 1925)
(from It's about time : poems. Rhinebeck, NY : Hopewell Press, 2015.)
I wonder how my life might twine and untwine
if, like the brontosaurus, I had a second brain
to work my tail from the base of my spine.
Two egos at odds in one bed, two ids
might cause two dreams at once, hybrids,
one sweet, one nightmare: my bottom half in the mouth
of a brontosaurus, long as a railroad train.
She and I do what most would find uncouth.
Same time, I am in bed, young me with a beauty,
dreaming I'm having a birthday party -
I'm spinning, a butterfly breaks free
out of my ear that is a chrysalis,
circles the room, finds an open window, flies south
to join the millions it needs for company.
I wake, it's morning, I read, a good guess,
what I never knew I thought before: poetry -
poets who simply honor the language.
I'm a psalmist with a Miss-directed penis.
Cupid plays at cards with me for kisses.
Venus, who never spanks, spanks me,
whispers to Mars in bed, "It's time you turned the page
on Stanley being Stanley.
I thought he went out of style in the Ice Age."
***
The way down, by Jean Sprackland (f. 1962)
(from Tilt. London : Jonathan Cape, 2007.)
Forget the path.
Hack through gorse and blackthorn
and walk into the stream.
The thing about a stream is
it knows where it’s going, has a gift
for finding the shortest route.
A path can lose its nerve,
peter out into a bog or bracken, divide
inscrutably in two. I’ve stood at that place
and weighed the choices, weighed
and checked again, while mist crawls
over the mountain like sleep.
When the stream divides
both streamlets are equally sure.
Each plays its own game – the slick of moss,
the sudden race over a sill of rock –
and each, if you let it,
will carry you down.
***
Alluvium, by Don McKay (f. 1942)
(from Strike/Slip. Ontario : McClelland & Stewart, 2006.)
You wake, it wants you,
your room is fleuve. No use
hiding underneath the covers,
no use clinging to the lamp. It bears away
your diary, your mystery, your dresser
bobs off lika a basket of reeds.
There goes the lamp you might have clung to,
trailing its muskrat tail,
there goes the laundry to its long last rinse.
The arms of your octopus, formerly
alarm clock, clutch, grabbing
like a teenage lover like a two-year-old it wants you
it won't wait for you to die
to lick the letters from your name.
Your old heart,
driven by its pell-mell bloodstream, spins,
legs on a runaway bike, you wake,
your room is fleuve, you're flotsam,
you're also-ran, you're all the riff-raff Noah
had no room for, uncountable
Canada geese and not-quite-standard moose,
you're everyone who ever
missed the playoffs, it wants you,
you have to go, already you can feel you're
somewhere else, deposited,
you're washed up in some other life as
insubstantial as a stone.
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