Europium, zirconium, lutetium, vanadium,
And lanthanum and osmium and astatine and radium,
And gold, protactinium and indium and gallium,
And iodine and thorium and thulium and thallium.
There’s yttrium, ytterbium, actinium, rubidium,
And boron, gadolinium, niobium, iridium,
And strontium and silicon and silver and samarium,
And bismuth, bromine, lithium, beryllium, and barium.
There’s holmium and helium and hafnium and erbium,
And phosphorus and francium and fluorine and terbium,
And manganese and mercury, molybdenum, magnesium,
Dysprosium and scandium and cerium and cesium.
And lead, praseodymium, and platinum, plutonium,
Palladium, promethium, potassium, polonium,
And tantalum, technetium, titanium, tellurium,
And cadmium and calcium and chromium and curium.
There’s sulfur, californium, and fermium, berkelium,
And also mendelevium, einsteinium, nobelium,
And argon, krypton, neon, radon, xenon, zinc, and rhodium,
And chlorine, carbon, cobalt, copper, tungsten, tin and sodium.
These are the only ones of which the news has come to Harvard,
And there may be many others but they haven’t been discavard.
How to Lose 2lbs a Week
by Gyles Brandreth
(born 1948)
To lose two pounds a week
To regain a figure slim and sleek
The rules are simple, if not nice:
No bread, potato, and no rice,
And when it comes to pasta, basta!
Carbs are out, and booze is too.
It’s tough, but do it and the news is you,
While inwardly resentful, bitter,
Outwardly are lither, fitter,
Trimmer, slimmer – nippy, zippy!
Yippee!
The diet works. It has my wife’s blessing. She watches her weight, and to great effect. But not everyone approves.
Against Dieting
by Blake Morrison
(born 1950)
Please, darling, no more diets.
I’ve read the books on why it’s
good for one’s esteem.
I’ve watched you jogging lanes and pounding treadmills.
I’ve even shed some kilos of my own.
But enough. What are love handles
between friends? For half a stone
it isn’t worth the sweat.
I’ve had it up to here with crispbread.
I doubt the premise, too.
Try to see it from my point of view.
I want not less but more of you.
If you are a married man, what follows could be the most useful poem in the book.
A Word to Husbands
by Ogden Nash
(1902–71)
To keep your marriage brimming
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you’re wrong, admit it;
Whenever you’re right, shut up.
My favourite philosopher is probably Will Rogers (1879–1935), a Cherokee American showman, film star, humorist, columnist and social commentator from Oklahoma, who travelled the world, made seventy-one movies (fifty of them ‘silents’) and wrote more than four thousand newspaper columns featuring such nuggets of wisdom as these:
Never let yesterday use up too much of today.
Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.
Good judgment comes from experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects.
Never miss a good chance to shut up.
Too many people spend money they haven’t earned to buy things they don’t want to impress people they don’t like.
Everything is changing. People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.
I don’t know whether Will Rogers came up with his line ‘The best way out of a difficulty is through it’ before or after Robert Frost wrote ‘The best way out is always through’, but, either way, it’s good advice. The variation of the line I like is the one that says, ‘The best way out is through the door’ – and that’s why I think this poem by the Czech immunologist and poet, Miroslav Holub, is one of the most useful and inspiring that I know. As you read it, and then as you learn it by heart, be aware of the punctuation and the line-breaks.
The door
by Miroslav Holub
(1923–98)
Go and open the door.
Maybe outside there’s
a tree, or a wood,
a garden,
or a magic city.
Go and open the door.
Maybe a dog’s rummaging.
Maybe you’ll see a face,
or an eye,
or the picture
of a picture.
Go and open the door.
If there’s a fog
it will clear.
Go and open the door.
Even if there’s only
the darkness ticking,
even if there’s only
the hollow wind,
even if
nothing
is there,
go and open the door.
At least
there’ll be
a draught.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Come Live with Me, and Be My LoveRomance guaranteed
Poetry can transform your love life. Learning a poem by heart can move your relationship to the next level. It really can.
Here’s how:
First, find your object of desire.
At your second date (not your first: these things shouldn’t be rushed), move the conversation on to favourite things: ask the object of desire about their favourite film, their favourite book, their favourite poem … Take the name of the poem on board, but don’t make a meal of it.
Between that second date and the fourth or fifth date (again, don’t rush it: slowly slowly catchy monkey), look up the poem and learn it by heart – secretly.
At that fourth or fifth date, or later, or sooner, or whenever the moment feels just right, simply say: ‘I have a present for you’ – and then recite your beloved’s favourite poem to them off by heart.
As a seduction technique, it’s unbeatable. It’s free, it’s easy, and it never fails. It doesn’t matter what the poem is: what matters is that you remembered what it was and then took the time and trouble to learn it off by heart so that, at an appropriate but unexpected moment, you could present it as a gift to the object of your desire.
If your gift is well received (and it will be), and it turns out your intended enjoys poetry as you do (if they don’t, I’m not sure they are worth pursuing), you can then try doing something very intimate together: you can both learn the same poem by heart – perhaps one of these.
You can learn your jointly chosen poem separately or together, but once you have learnt it you must speak it to one another face to face. Until you have tried it, you won’t believe how sexy the experience can be.
The Passionate Shepherd to His Love
by Christopher Marlowe
(1564–93)
Come live with me, and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove,
That valleys, groves, hills and fields,
Woods, or steepy mountain yields.
And we will sit upon the rocks,
Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks
By shallow rivers, to whose falls
Melodious birds sing madrigals.
And I will make thee beds of roses,
And a thousand fragrant posies,
A cap of flowers and a kirtle
Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle;
A gown made of the finest wool
Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
Fa
ir lined slippers for the cold,
With buckles of the purest gold;
A belt of straw and ivy-buds,
With coral clasps and amber studs:
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.
The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each May-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.
To His Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell
(1621–78)
Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.
We would sit down, and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love’s day.
Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side
Shouldst rubies find: I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood:
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze.
Two hundred to adore each breast;
But thirty thousand to the rest.
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart:
For, Lady, you deserve this state;
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But at my back I always hear
Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found;
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song: then worms shall try
That long-preserved virginity:
And your quaint honour turn to dust;
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave’s a fine and private place,
But none, I think, do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapped power.
Let us roll all our strength and all
Our sweetness up into one ball:
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Through the iron gates of life:
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
A Red, Red Rose
by Robert Burns
(1759–96)
My luve is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
My luve is like the melodie,
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in luve am I,
And I will luve thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun!
I will luve thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.
And fare-thee-weel, my only luve,
And fare-thee-weel a while!
And I will come again, my luve,
Tho’ it were ten-thousand mile!
Meeting at Night
by Robert Browning
(1812–89)
The grey sea and the long black land;
And the yellow half-moon large and low;
And the startled little waves that leap
In fiery ringlets from their sleep,
As I gain the cove with pushing prow,
And quench its speed i’ the slushy sand.
Then a mile of warm sea-scented beach;
Three fields to cross till a farm appears;
A tap at the pane, the quick sharp scratch
And blue spurt of a lighted match,
And a voice less loud, through its joys and fears,
Than the two hearts beating each to each!
Wild Nights
by Emily Dickinson
(1830–86)
Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!
Futile the winds
To a heart in port, –
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.
Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!
I’ve Got You under My Skin
by Cole Porter
(1891–1964)fn1
I’ve got you under my skin,
I’ve got you deep in the heart of me,
So deep in my heart, you’re really a part of me,
I’ve got you under my skin.
I tried so not to give in,
I said to myself, ‘This affair it never will go so well.’
But why should I try to resist when, darling, I know so well
I’ve got you under my skin.
I’d sacrifice anything, come what might,
For the sake of having you near,
In spite of a warning voice that comes in the night,
And repeats and repeats in my ear,
‘Don’t you know, little fool, you never can win,
Use your mentality,
Wake up to reality.’
But each time I do, just the thought of you
Makes me stop, before I begin,
’Cause I’ve got you under my skin.
Strawberries
by Edwin Morgan
(1920–2010)
There were never strawberries
like the ones we had
that sultry afternoon
sitting on the step
of the open french window
facing each other
your knees held in mine
the blue plates in our laps
the strawberries glistening
in the hot sunlight
we dipped them in sugar
looking at each other
not hurrying the feast
for one to come
the empty plates
laid on the stone together
and I bent towards you
sweet in that air
in my arms
abandoned like a child
from your eager mouth
the taste of strawberries
in my memory
lean back again
let me love you
let the sun beat
on our forgetfulness
one hour of all
the heat intense
and summer lightning
on the Kilpatrick hills
let the storm wash the plates
Atlas
by U. A. Fanthorpe
(1929–2009)
There is a kind of love called maintenance,
Which stores the WD40 and knows when to use it;
Which checks the insurance, and doesn’t forget
The milkman; which remembers to plant bulbs;
Which answers letters; which knows the way
The money goes; which deals with dentists
And Road Fund Tax and meeting trains,
And postcards to the lonely; which upholds
The permanently ricketty elaborate
Structures of living; which is Atlas.
And maintenance is the sensible side of love,
Which knows what time and weather are doing
To my brickwork; insulates my faulty wiring;
Laughs at my dryrotten jokes; remembers
&
nbsp; My need for gloss and grouting; which keeps
My suspect edifice upright in air,
As Atlas did the sky.
Not Only
by Brian Patten
(born 1946)
Not only the leaf shivering with delight
No,
Not only the morning grass shrugging off the weight of frost
No,
Not only the wings of the crane fly consumed by fire
No,
Not only steam rising from the horse’s back
No,
Not only the sound of the sunflower roaring
No,
Not only the golden spider spinning
No,
Not only the cathedral window deep inside the raindrop
No,
Not only the door opening at the back of the clouds
No,
Not only flakes of light settling like snow
No,
Not only the sky as blue and smooth as an egg
No,
Not only these things
No,
But without you none of these things.
The Beauty of Union
by George the Poet
(born 1991)fn2
There’s an indescribable beauty in union
In two beings forming one new being
Entering each other’s world
Surrendering each other’s selves
Accepting the invitation to be everything to someone else
There’s an unparalleled bravery in union
In telling the one you love:
‘The only way that we can truly win
Is if I think of you in everything I do
And honour every decision you faithfully include me in.’
Love gives union true meaning
It illuminates the path
It wants us to compromise, communicate and laugh
It wants us to elevate, appreciate without pride
Love is oblivious to the outside
Even with an audience of millions
Even when that love bears immortal significance
All of this is met with cordial indifference
By the two people at the heart of it
Two individuals when they started it
Becoming two halves of one partnership
Such is the beauty of union
Such is the beauty of union