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