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.