Vegetable love

These women know a thing or two about life. They've worked, raised families, looked after grandchildren and outlived husbands. They can tell a good lettuce when they see one, and if the grower is late arriving at the farmers' market they're waiting, eagle-eyed, at the head of the queue, ready to grab the best of the crop as soon as it's unloaded.

Last week I got here late and had to make do with the withered remnants of the vegetable stall, all the rest having been been cleaned out. Today I was early but these resolute ladies were earlier still. I doubt they would have surrendered to Andrew Marvell's cajoling flattery:

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.

(I know, nothing to do with lettuces, just an excuse for a great poem.)