[Mark McDonnell]

I'm sorry, Alex, but to me it all sounds a bit silly and painfully old-fashioned. I’m afraid I laughed, picturing the speaker declaiming the poem in a supermarket and people politely edging away from him. The naming of a specific supermarket chain also struck me as tonally odd and, to me, comical.

Of course there’s nothing wrong with rhapsodising about fruit, or any of the simple things we take for granted; it's something poetry can do better than almost anything else. But pharaohs, maidens and the Gods of Olympus just distance me from it as a genuine, sensory experience.

Tastes, of course, may differ.

Mark