For Comp. 3401 you were invited to submit a poem that included the line ‘My vegetable love should grow’ from Marvell’s ‘To His Coy Mistress’. There were lots of entries, some of them quite fruity (sorry). There are too many worthy runners-up to name names, but the£25 vouchers go to the winners below.
My vegetable, love, should grow,
not end up on your plate,
at least until it’s won first prize
at the village fète.
I’ve never nurtured one so vast,
nor hosed a hue so green –
how can you think of eating it
like some mere runner bean?
But at my back I hear you mutter
It’s just a courgette, after all…
Hands off! – such plants once rooted in
Eden, before the Fall.
I could bang on an age or two
extolling its perfection,
though it and I of course would need
cryopreservation.
Tom Vaughan
Had we but world enough and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime,
I’d woo you in a bed of foam
And plant my seedlings in your loam.
You’d fondle figs and stroke courgettes,
Slide fingers under insect nets.
My vegetable love should grow,
And swell until the world should know
Of well-hung cucumbers and leeks,
And bloated yams in sunlit streaks.
But always at my back I hear
That old man, Winter, hurrying near:
Your brassicas begin to droop,
My tubers wilt in autumn’s swoop;
So let us plough this fertile bed –
And trade our juices, ripe and red.
Ralph Goldswain
To His Coy Onion
My vegetable! Love should grow – let’s not
To photosynthesis of leafy heart
Admit impediments, remote shallot!
From coy indifference, lady, now depart,
For amor inter allia, onion love
Is sure to bring a tear to any eye,
Our love’s as strong as any garlic clove:
The Posh and Becks of allioideae!
Be not remote, shallot, and be not coy,
Nor hearken to the speciesist naysayers
But onion girl, in front of onion boy,
Remove those shy resistances in layers.
For some, vegetal passion, so humungous,
Takes over like a knotweed or a fungus,
Or moss or bindweed, but with me and you,
It just was planted quietly – and grew.
David Silverman
‘Mon petit chou,’ I cooed. ‘My sweet
Neat vegan, good enough to eat,
My cabbage, let our fates enmesh…’
But she’d no yearning for my flesh.
Though tasty as a teatime, she
Felt no affinity for me.
I pleaded ‘Get to know me. Oh,
My vegetable, love might grow…’
Cajoled by plaintive words I said,
At last she ventured to my bed,
But then, in terms that I thought caddish,
Compared my manhood to a radish.
I said: ‘While you express such scorn,
No wonder that it shrinks forlorn.
Oh, did you but encourage, though,
My vegetable, love, should grow.’
George Simmers
My lady, you know that I adore you
But do this for me, I implore you
Open up yourself to the possibility
That raising our crops organically
Will not suppress the pests that plague us –
Grub worms assault your rutabagas
While the blight of white rust ravishes
The swollen red globes of my radishes.
But lady, you cast my proposal aside
When I suggest we use inorganic pesticide –
I do not wish to see you compromised,
But my galangals are woefully undersized.
With glyphosate, my vegetable love should grow
And we could win first prize in the village show
In the root and tuber category –
Just think how marvellous that would be!
Sue Pickard
Depleted supermarket shelves, each rack
emptied of salads, cabbage, lemons, lime
caused by (again) a fresh computer hack –
the only ‘fresh’ thing here – so now it’s time
(again) to get down dirty, clear the weeds
and head-high thistles, double-dig the plot,
manure and water it and plant the seeds
of future self-sufficiency: the lot.
My vegetable love should grow – it should
produce imagined glories. Alas, snails
plus slugs, droughts, pigeons, carrot fly (again)
doom this back-breaking enterprise. It fails,
reminding me I never learn: that soil
won’t feed our fantasies, just the regrets.
I blame foul weather, pests, the thankless toil
and feeble germination of courgettes.
D.A. Prince
Marvell writes, ‘My vegetable love should grow’:
though Heaven only knows what Marvell means.
But it could be something different, very much so,
to my own love for a tin of Heinz Baked Beans.
Did Marvell, maybe, spend long hours
in lovers’ trysts with cauliflowers
or use his wily charm to coax
sweet kisses from young artichokes,
then wildly and improperly
deflower stems of purple sprouting broccoli?
Then when old and tired and ravaged
was his choice between limp cabbage
or some wrinkled old tomatoes
as his last inamoratos?
Or did he manage, even yet,
to woo a coy cucumber or courgette?
Martin Parker
No. 3404: Wild time
You are invited to design your own midsummer ritual (16 lines/150 words maximum). Please email entries to competition@spectator.co.uk by midday on 11 June.
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