25 years after Larkin

They jump on the bandwagon, like pouring treacle

over a sponge pudding, the latter an ancient temple

of Mrs Beaton's recipe, they plump for the recitation

and the republication, it is Sir John B and his poetry

with jazz and copulation, take a common garden

variety phrase spoken in a bar, and blend it with sarcasm,

For example, when in the 1950's, you went out with a tart,

The reader plays gooseberry to Larkin, and in the 1970's

the reader goes arse over elbow through the high window,

Now, fuck me silly, if the F word is not finally a truism,

I mean evolution was as Ernst Mayr said sex driven

Like Larkin in the library poring over the S & M magazine

In his later years he is a dead ringer for Eric Morecambe,

Though Eric was funnier, Phil was probably wittier,

Like comics everywhere, there is inside a tragedian

So babies and children can be dined upon in modest

proposals, uncle Phil can take out his mortar and pestle

to grind the Victorian into a Saturday walk in the park

to snog and slip the hand under the skirt of history

Have his will with a bird called Jill, to write a novel

bad boy academic style, to play master with pizzle

to whip the bull and cant of the precious middleclass

which he did well with school boy delicious naughtiness

Though his targets sometimes, and his outlook

were from my pov, would not meet my approval

Indeed, those Enid Blyton rhymes in his verse

Gets me thinking of good old Noddy and Big Ears

and then, to the infamous labels on the Robinson's jam

from which one must move to the butty and smutty

to the "Good Old Days when a spade was a

Oh Phil if you were here today, I'd say to you piss

off you silly wanker, but as you are long gone

we think, well your poetry was not that nutty

you were better than Thom Gunn and others

(Really??) and worthy of your own statue,

I'd have Thom any day, and even Sir J B

However, if one takes time and reads his poetry

and gets beyond the political, forget his take

on women, read Alfred Adler and inferiority

complex, perhaps you can understand Larkin

and his sex problem, his sadness and loneliness

After all, it sums up nicely a whole set of people

Called the English male in State of Eternal Panic.