A new poem (about a poet)

Come Right Again

Larkin was edgy, ’cos he ‘fucked you up’,
his Anglo-Saxon worn like slashed blue jeans.
Such bold four-lettered nerve was too abrupt
to go unnoticed by us wayward teens.

It was good enough for Chaucer, FFS!
Old Geoff made use of quaint to pull a stunt
knowing his readers would all get the joke,
and end up not too far away from Kent.

But Larkin swerved, and that was all the magic:
beyond the guttural groans and lack of care
you got a sense of ‘what was really there’
in (say) ‘Afternoons’ and ‘Myxomatosis’ –

a void uncaptured by a mere kenosis,
the sliding of the teenage to the tragic.