Modern Love

BOth Donne and Marlowe wrote poems beginning `Conte live with me and he my love.' For a prize of six guineas competitors were invited to bring this theme bang up to .date.

WAS hardly prepared for over a hundred poets eager for their loves to come live with them, and I was slightly disappointed (although not sur- prised) that the inducements offered were so largely and grossly material. It was generally assumed that love could be best tempted by such things as flatlets, hi-fl gramophones, nylons, launderettes, Nu-Spring mattresses, Frigidaires, polythene tableware, 'earrings just like Barbara Kelly's,' income-tax allowances and, on a slightly higher level, 'telly-Pelican culture.' At least one competitor, however, spurned such things, defying the modern scientific world and concluding:

The world expands; but we are curled Safe in our own enchanted world Which they shall never chart whose hopes Are circumscribed by isotopes,

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Nan Wishart offered safety in a bomb-fearing world :

I've got a cupboard full of grub: I've got some whitewash in a tub:

• I've got a tank that's six by eight My goods to decontaminate.

Nancy Gunter's Passionate Naturist' addressed. his love:

Our cult undresses its recruits In perfect-fitting birthday suits,

• One colour-scheme the seasons through, In summer brown, in winter blue.

and Paul M'Clelland told his love in very neat verses:

And you shall wear a suit of lead, Fit armour for your dainty head. A geiger-counter I will hold, More precious than a ring of gold.

And I'll ielease a gamma ray For your enjoyment every day;

And if these pleasures may thee move, Then live with me and be my Love.

A great deal of ingenuity was apparent— indeed, in the cases of some seasoned competitors, excessive ingenuity rather spoiled the completed poem. Too many entrants went wrong, 1 thought, in assuming that the poet lover was a confirmed cynic, and that the invitation was best expressed in stressing his disadvantages Molly is short in Ladbroke Grove'). It was also assumed that the lover's offer by no means inevitably meant an offer of marriage: This modern touch—if it is a modern touch—came out in the couplet :

And when l'm bored with you, of course, There'll be no need for a divorce.

Even `Lesbia's joys' were celebrated.

On the whole, as the prize poems show, the sky-exploiting poets were the most successful. Wyn Boileau, G. J. Blundell, Kenneth S. Kitchin and J. A. Lindon share the prize equally.

PRIZES

(WYN BOILEAU)

Conic live with me and be my love, And we will all the hazards prove Of honeymooning at a height The 'Sputnik way' by satellite.

Our menu will be ultra smart, Angels on horseback a la carte.

Dressed Crab, sliced Goat for our delight, Grilled on a handy meteorite.

Our News will be the Evening Star, And Charles's Wain our super car. Should we a family begin The Heavenly Twins we'll gather in.

They, hurtling down the Milky Way, Will grab their bottled milk, Grade A, And suck their rosy thumbs to sleep With lullaby of 'Bleep, Bleep, Bleep.'

(G. J. BLUNDELL) Come live with me and be my love.. And we with modern times will move; Chase the four winds in cushioned cars, Or fly, steel-feathered, near the stars.

Within our home we shall agree The world upon a screen to see, Or hear some master's broadcast string To us in love love's music bring. • You shall go clad in nylon's mist, Your milk-white skin thus softly kissed; And from wolf. winter's cruel teeth Be kept by mink's protecting sheath.

Nor shall you toil by range or fire To satisfy our hunger's ire,

But open caskets with a key And there cooked meals to order see.

(KENNETH S. KITCHIN) Come, live with me and be my love, And we shall soar through realms above. To share the pleasures life can yield Beyond this earth's magnetic field.

In chromium rocket, snug and neat, Sharing one soft foam-rubber seat, We'll drive up through the sunlit night • To our Venusian satellite.

There, as we travel fast and far, We'll run our own espresso bar; Through plastic tube's hygienic tip Celestial coffee you,shall sip.

Where jewelled meteors round us flame, We'll watch TV's best panel game; Or uninhibitedly reel To LP discs of Tommy Steele.

(J. A. LINDON)

THE LUNATIC LOVER AS POET

Come live with me and be my love! Like flighty Sputnik up above, We're Moony, darling, me and you— We need a Satellite or Two.

On Windscale Waffle you shall dine. And sport the new Elliptic Line, And when the world is fast asleep We'll amorously Bleep and Bleep!

We'll never Fall Out or go Bust, In Jodrell Bank we'll put our Trust. And I will serenade you on A Tune-computing Datatron.

One single (!) Orbit shall be ours Beyond the Gravity of Powers, And you shall Rock-et-Roll, my dear— A Hep-cat of the Stratosphere!