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.