In Competition No. 2926 you were invited to submit a poem about HS2.

The idea for this challenge came to me as I was listening on YouTube to W.H. Auden’s poem ‘Night Mail’, which he wrote to accompany a section of the terrific 1936 documentary about the London to Glasgow Postal Special directed by Basil Wright and Harry Watt (who described Auden as looking like a ‘half-witted Swedish deckhand’).

Not altogether surprisingly, the tone of the entry was less celebratory than Auden’s, with the notable exception of Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead’s prize-winning submission, written in MacGonagallese. Her fellow victors are rewarded with £30 apiece and George Simmers snaffles the extra fiver.

There’s a thunder down the line at eleven fifty-nine,
And there’ll be another due at twelve o-six.
Yes, several times each hour a train of massive power
Is hurtling busy townies through the sticks,
And leering through the glass of a window in first class
(At meadows trashed and woodlands bulldozed flat)
Is a vicious tabby gent claiming dubious descent
From Skimbleshanks, the famous Railway Cat.
His moggy grin is mirthless, mocking dwellings rendered worthless
By the track that’s scarred the centre of the nation.
Skimble Junior (‘Call me Skimby!’) hisses scorn for every nimby
Who’s inclined to sob at rural devastation.
There’s no mercy in his features for otters or such creatures
Who have lost their fine and ancient habitat.
‘Businessmen demand a beeline!’ mews this hard efficient feline,
Skimble Junior, the modern high-speed cat.
George Simmers

It’s as pointless as cheating at patience,
As cuckoo as ironing the cat,
A businessmen’s scheme, a commercial wet dream
In the shape of a formal diktat.

Though the magic words ‘northern’ and ‘powerhouse’,
Pronounced like a mystical spell,
Are combined to inspire, setting all hearts on fire,
They exude a pestiferous smell.

Prepare for those time and cost overruns
As it links cities already linked
But at much greater speed, like a junkie in need,
All reason and judgment extinct.

Perhaps in some dim, distant future
A drone locomotive will zoom
Through environments grey with exhausted decay
And a dreamlike, Ballardian gloom.
Basil Ransome-Davies

This monster-clogging transportation
with costs outstripping past inflation,
loading despair on expectation
across the whole mistrustful nation;
this can’t be simply job creation
to give a workless population
something for hope and exultation
instead of permanent stagnation;
this hare-brained scheme is suffocation
of countryside and preservation,
revealing London’s concentration
on rural life’s elimination;
the HS2 is pure damnation
from birth to final destination.
And what would bring us some elation?
An end to this embuggeration.
D.A. Prince

All success to the project HS2!
It’s designed by Her Majesty’s Government for people like me and you
Who want to get very quickly from London to Leeds
And be able to do so in great comfort, all built on the proceeds
Of enormous private investment and revenue streams
(’Tis one of the Department for Transport’s greatest dreams)
Which is very good news since it looks as though it’ll cost dear
And George Osborne hopes that China will see its way clear
To stump up for some of those three hundred and fifty-one miles of new track
Which will pass through, under or above several beautiful places, to which some cry ‘Alack!’
These high speed trains are most beautiful to see
And may possibly prove quite handy for people like you and me.
Carolyn Thomas-Coxhead

Well, here I am, in keen anticipation
Of travelling on the splendid High-Speed train.
Gone are the days of feckless cancellation
Provoked by fallen leaves, or heavy rain,
Or unexpected sunlight on the rails,
Or snow, or fog. We’ll soon be setting off…
But shouldn’t it be here?
The speaker wails
And crackles into life; a furtive cough,
A disembodied voice: ‘Regrettably,
For passengers who’ve booked with HS2,
The train that was announced on Platform Three
Is cancelled. We apologise. It’s due
To fallen leaves and snow at Watford Junction
And unexpected sun in Kentish Town,
Which caused a massive system-wide malfunction
And brought our whole computer network down.’
Brian Allgar

No. 2929: Nostradamus

You are invited to submit an acrostic poem containing some predictions for the next decade, in which the first letters of the lines read NOSTRADAMUS. Please email entries, wherever possible, to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 30 December.