Thursday 10 April 2014

Lines on an Unfinished Philip Larkin Cento Or, “Ah, Diddums!”

I open up my note book at random
and see/half-read an unfamiliar line:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar…
Another line begins Inaccuracy…
Then something prods the memory – a cento
from Philip Larkin’s lines, left incomplete:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad
By being stupid or weak.
It used to make me throw up.

Not quite the order he intended – but –
far better capturing, I think, the whining
self-pity he so nearly perfected.

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