Bard Billot on the bumbling Baron
Race for the Polls
Baron Luxon speeds across the polar wastes
aboard his electric blue jet sled “Titanic.”
The sky is cloudless and the way is clear
and the Baron is well in the lead.
In his toasty warm fine mink cossack hat
his mind is composing his telegram home:
LUXON AT POLE. FLAG PLANTED. VICTORY!
But a massive uncanny object comes into view
on the empty sub-zero plain.
The Baron slows and draws abreast of a giant ice cube.
There, sealed within, he glimpses the frozen features
of Indiana Bridges, the legendary explorer
now encased eternally in a grim icy Chamber.
The Baron shivers and presses on.
In the very next mile, blocking his way,
looms an Empress Penguin, with a blonde bob
and aggressive shoulder pads.
It croaks at him with a mad glint in its eyes.
“CRUSH–ER! CRUSH–ER!”
The Baron shudders and presses on.
Yet next he comes across a lonely tent,
open to the harsh unforgiving wind,
with no sign of life around except a dead fire
of cold ashes and some gnawed husky giblets.
He reaches for a note flapping
on a guide rope.
“I am going outside and may be gone
for some time,” is the scrawled message,
signed “Toad of Mullet.”
The Baron is shaken by these ill omens.
But lo, there in the distance
approaches a lone figure from the south.
The figure is wearing a red dress.
“Good day,” says the Baron.
“Have you … did you reach the Pole?”
“Yes,” says the Lady in Red.
“I’m on my way back home now.”
“Er,” says the Baron, hopefully,
“do you think I may be the next to arrive?”
“Maybe,” says the Lady in Red.
“But I did hand my flag to Captain Chipkins
of the Royal Polar Corps.”
Baron Luxon gasps and whirls around to stare south
into the blinding white through his binoculars:
and only then does he see, with horror,
a full day's march in advance,
Captain Chipkins' sled
disappearing in the distance towards the Pole. Victor Billot has previously felt moved to compose Odes for such luminaries as Stuart Nash, Bishop Brian, Clarke Gayford, Mike Hosking, and Garrick Tremain.
