I sought a theme and sought for it in vain,
I sought it hourly for two days or so.
Maybe at last, a Philip Larkin fan,
I must be satisfied with life sucks, although
Morning and night as this verse began
His other old familiars were on show:
Don’t reproduce. Money and fame are rot.
Death scares my pants off and the Lord knows what.
What did he but enumerate old themes,
First Yeats-inspired (as all close readers know),
Then, through The Movement, all our shattered dreams,
Vain gaiety, vain battle, vain repose,
Themes of the embittered heart, or so it seems,
The ways that poetry turns into prose;
But what cared I that set him on to ride,
I, loving this bridesmaid who poked at brides.
His masterful images because complete
Grew in pure mind but out of what began?
A mound of refuse or the sweepings of a street,
Old kettles, old bottles, and a broken can,
Old iron, old bones, old rags, that raving slut
Who keeps the till. Now that his life is gone
He must lie down within Westminster’s heart.
At the pantheon of the poet’s art.