Flowers, a poem by Wendy Cope.

Post 435 - Wendy Cope Cope was born in Erith, Kent, in 1945. Following her graduation with a degree in history from St Hilda's College, Oxford, Cope spent fifteen years as a primary-school teacher. In 1981, she became Arts and Reviews editor for the Inner London Education Authority magazine, Contact. Five years later she became a freelance writer and was a television critic for The Spectator magazine until 1990.
In 1998, she was voted the listeners' choice in a BBC Radio 4 poll to succeed Ted Hughes as Poet Laureate. With Andrew Motion's term as Poet Laureate coming to an end in 2009, Cope was again widely considered a popular candidate. However, although Cope did not explicitly say she would turn down the role, she has stated that she believes the post should be discontinued.

Her poetry is perhaps best known for its humor and wit. The joke has often been centered on men from the point of view of the single heterosexual woman. This is most famously used in ‘Bloody Men’ (from Serious Concerns, 1992):

Bloody men are like bloody buses –
You wait for about a year
And as soon as one approaches your stop
Two or three others appear.


Flowers by Wendy Cope.


Some men never think of it.

You did. You'd come along

And say you'd nearly brought me flowers

But something had gone wrong.


The shop was closed. Or you had doubts -

The sort that minds like ours

Dream up incessantly. You thought

I might not want your flowers.


It made me smile and hug you then.

Now I can only smile.

But, look, the flowers you nearly brought

Have lasted all this while.