Philip Larkin - Toads
Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can't I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?
Six days of the week it soils
With its sickening poison -
Just for paying a few bills!
That's out of proportion.
Lots of folk live on their wits:
Lecturers, lispers,
Losels, loblolly-men, louts-
They don't end as paupers;
Lots of folk live up lanes
With fires in a bucket,
Eat windfalls and tinned sardines-
they seem to like it.
Their nippers have got bare feet,
Their unspeakable wives
Are skinny as whippets - and yet
No one actually starves.
Ah, were I courageous enough
To shout Stuff your pension!
But I know, all too well, that's the stuff
That dreams are made on:
For something sufficiently toad-like
Squats in me, too;
Its hunkers are heavy as hard luck,
And cold as snow,
And will never allow me to blarney
My way of getting
The fame and the girl and the money
All at one sitting.
I don't say, one bodies the other
One's spiritual truth;
But I do say it's hard to lose either,
When you have both.
What a fab poem?! ..... to me its all about the daily grind and musing about those whom throw caution to the wind and live unconventional and far more exciting lives.
I live in a Hull which is a city in the north east of England. Recently Hull has launched a city wide artistic exhibition to commemorate the great works of Phillip Larkin. Bellow is a few picks of the 25 Toads that have been scattered throughout the city.
If you ever find yourself in Hull ask at the Tourist information office for a Larkin's Toad trail map and enjoy the cute amphibians yourself.
xxx
