Death and Marriage, Death and Marriage

I rejoice that H.R.H. The Prince of Wales has finally been permitted to marry Camilla Parker-Bowles, the distant cousin of Our Own Miss Sallie Parker. Well, good on 'im. He has, to my eye, landed a more prepossessing specimen this go-around. From the wedding pictures, she looked like a million quid, invested in all the right places.

These Windsors are certainly no strangers to the Groves of Eros: first his great uncle, then his aunt, and now he have fallen victims to the Divine Pash. There'll always be an England, where there's a lovers' lane, as the old song says.

The other day, Sarah Lyall wrote in the Nyok Times,

How do you solve a problem like "Camilla"?

If you are Andrew Motion, Britain's poet laureate and the man charged with producing a cheerful commemorative poem about Prince Charles's impending marriage to Camilla Parker Bowles, none of the obvious rhymes - vanilla, flotilla, Godzilla - seem appropriate, somehow.

I charitably refrain from pointing out that Ms. Lyall's "Godzilla" dig shows that she wouldn't know a goddess if one bit her in the leg, and merely note that the solution to the problem she poses is childishly obvious, especially now, when visions of John Paul II are dancing in one's head:

Dies ludi, dies illa
Solvet vita in tranquilla:
Teste Carolus cum Camilla.

Verse © 2005 Nathaniel DesH. Petrikov (what little there is of it that's original, of course)

I look forward to reading Mr. Motion's epithalamium. From a brief glance at his bio, I like the cut of his jib.