Competition 3434 was prompted by the 400th anniversary of the retrospectively controversial purchase of Manhattan island by the Dutchman Peter Minuit from a local tribe, supposedly for 60 guilders ($24). You were invited to write a poem on the subject.

The standard was really high and the whittling process tricky: mentions must go to A.H. Harker, Sue Pickard, Brian Murdoch, Joseph Houlihan, Ian Allen, Richard Warren, Nicholas Lee, George Simmers and Helen Baty, and there were other good entries besides. The £25 vouchers go to the following.

Come nether man from Nether Land,
Brung purse of beads and guilder,
And all us tribe, we took him bribe:
Him Big Chief of this wilder.

This nether man from Nether Land
All fine frock coat and hat on
Him walk round coast and raise him toast:
Him name our place Manhattan.

Then nether man from Nether Land
Fill up the land with Dutchmen
Despite him rent them never went
But brung here whole heap cousin.

That nether man of Nether land
Him left on other business
Settlers barefaced had us displaced,
Now we must squat an isthmus.

Adrian Fry

We bought some New World land today,
With sixty guilders and some beads,
Straight from the locals (what a steal!)
To cover all our trading needs.
The deal of 1626,
A bargain slice of real estate,
While who fleeced who is hard to say –
We scoff at doubt, ignore debate.
We’ll change Manhattan’s silly name,
New Amsterdam’s a better fit,
A name that will resound in song,
You’ll want to be a part of it.
You could say it was worth much more,
But here’s a free tip from the Dutch,
It’s quite a scraggly bit of land,
We doubt it will amount to much.

Janine Beacham

Quite some island: washed with noise,
The roar of traffic, yowl of hoardings,
Nothing like the film recordings –
But still, with size, and even poise,

The babel-city, trodden flat –
Its grids and lines. The people stomp ’em!
All this for small change, and some wampum?
Four hundred years! Who’d fancy that?

The sky’s above them, cricks the necks,
High beyond the sun-flash scrapers,
Enough to give you fits of vapours –
So much money! So much sex!

The island’s world is rearranged –
Crammed, compacted into squares.
Manhattan once had wolves and bears –
Nothing, as they say, has changed.

Bill Greenwell

How much is that island in the Arctic?
The one with the gold and rare earth?
I find making billions cathartic –
I wonder what Greenland is worth.

I hear New York sold for sixty guilders,
Twelve tulips, some clogs, cheese and beads.
On Monday I’m sending in the builders –
A Vegas is what Greenland needs.

I don’t want an Orkney or a Shetland,
A Faroe, a Lundy, a Mull.
I don’t want a peat bog or a wetland –
It has to be dripping with oil.

I’m carving up half the Caribbean;
A slice of Iran suits me fine.
I’m raking it in – soon you’ll be seein’
Those Trump Pearly Gates will be mine.

David Silverman

It followed the usual pattern:
The locals fell foul of a scam;
The colonists ‘purchased’ Manhattan,
And made it their New Amsterdam.

The Lenape thought everyone’s taught a
True lesson: earth’s ours on loan;
The land and the air and the water
Are not things that man can just own.

The indigenous tribe were bewildered
By the incomprehensible Dutch;
What did they want with 60-odd guilders?
Were they given too little? Too much?

Or was it a fault in translation?
Did ‘sale’ for ‘lease’ seal their fate?
Would they be the world’s richest nation
If they’d only had Google Translate?

Nicholas Hodgson

The Dutch clumped out from their stockades
And gestured round the land,
The streams and river, trees and glades,
Then bowed, and shook my hand;
And proffered beads and tortoiseshell
They’d carried from their fort,
But there was nothing here to sell,
And nothing to be bought.

The spirits of the dragonflies
As bright and hard as gems,
Of wolves and woods and goldeneye
Live on, and I with them.
The shades of what the Dutchmen wrought,
The streets he paved with gold,
Are only real to those who bought
What never could be sold.

Nick Syrett

No. 3437: Wintery look

‘Why, what’s the matter, that you have such a February face?’ You are invited to submit a passage or poem which incorporates this line (150 words/16 lines maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by 11 February.