Spectator competitions winners: ‘O, my love is like…’

In Competition No. 3236, you were invited to submit a poem that begins ‘Oh my love is like…’ .

From the funny and sweet to the waspish and jaundiced, the entry ranged pleasingly far and wide; as the poet Patrick Kavanagh wrote in his sonnet ‘The Hospital’ (‘A year ago I fell in love with the functional ward/ Of a chest hospital…), ‘But nothing whatever is by love debarred…’

Commendations go to Nicholas Hodgson, Adrian Fry, Mary McLean and Richard Spencer. The winners, printed below, earn their authors £25 each.

O My Love is like a sad old lag That’s newly sprung from jail. My love is like a jiffy bag Recycled in the mail. But still for you, my bonny lad They hold what’s tried and true. Though both have weathered good and bad They still do what they do.    The one is tentative and slow The other slack and battered; But both have many miles to go And hold what’s always mattered. And still for you, my bonny lad My love is tried and true And though it’s weathered good and bad It’s always here for you. Ann Drysdale

O my love is like a battleaxe, Her language rough and salty. Hard-hearted as the Income Tax, She channels Sybil Fawlty.   Her raucous shouts of ‘Basil!’ fill The staircase and the hall. The gaslighting persists until I’m going up the wall.   I’d nursed a dream of happiness, Of romance everlasting, But who can ever second-guess What dice the gods are casting?   Should Eros lead you up the creek It’s vain to sob and fret. If you can’t get the love you seek, Then love the one you get. Basil Ransome-Davies

O, my love, is like a turning Wheel, a ring, a nimbus burning — Or a coiling ouroboros, Or an orbit or a torus. All around me, I’m discerning   Signs of O, for whom I’m yearning Always, with emotions churning. Let us roundly praise, in chorus, O, my love.   Any lettered poet earning Honours in the halls of learning, Versed in Shakespeare, Burns and Horace Lauds, with passion and thesaurus, Every little thing concerning O, my love. Alex