This installment is about This Be The Verse by Philip Larkin (1922-1985).
I don’t remember when I came across this, possibly while I was at school. I do remember it being the first poem I’d come across with swearing in it!
They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
It definitely appealed to the cynical part of me.
Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.
At the time, it seemed to perfectly express something I was feeling, which I suppose is one reason that art, of any kind, speaks to you.
