[Allen Tice]

Ann, while researching V S-W’s ‘Full Moon’ poem, I found that this forum isn’t protected, and that “wooing” you would be as public as wooing a charmer in a large department store street display window. Besides, I know that your heart belongs to Robert Graves (of ‘The Persian Version’). We might be great friends, but never sweethearts, probably, even if you wore Persian silks. I could never cuckold the author of ‘I, Claudius’ and ‘Belisarius’! There is honor among some of us men still. Yet, as John Paul Jones supposedly said, “I have not yet begun to fight”. Byzantium, weird and barely holy at the top as it often was, used Greek letters to write in (αβγδ...). If you want to woo me, by contrast, brush up your Aeschylus. No Russian this week, please. Καζαντζακις? Meh. You could try something by Atticus to Cicero. Or Philodemus.

[Ann Drysdale]

Sir, your reference to Robert Graves is incontrovertible evidence that you have been tinkering with my juvenilia. Any further intercourse between us is therefore out of the question.

[Allen Tice]

“Woo me, Allen, with your pink pyjamas.” I don’t even know where you keep your juvenilia. I neither tinker nor toy. Nor give a tinker’s dam, madame. As Billboard Clinton said, “I have not tinkered with her inconsequenda, tra-la.” Now you make me doubt that you are a true heart. Bye, until you calm down.