Hull or Hell
Of larks trains windows and brooks
The poet he writes it all down in his book
Won’t meet your eye but he wants you to look
In Hull or hell he lies
Lambs in the winter and swans in the spring
Children at play they’re like birds on the wing
And the poet he writes that the sun seems to swing
In Hull or hell he lies
Away from the world and away from the page
Hidden in corners the gathering of age
Retreats to the wings where he once held the stage
In Hull or hell he lies
The dirt and the filth that we don’t get to see
That’s eating his language away
This yellow-eyed nastiness hides from the light of the day
Resenting the everyday growing so old
Where winter once pictured as flowers in fold
Turned frosty and bitter and weathered and cold
In Hull or hell he lies
His housemaid she tried but the dirt grew so fast
The darkest of colours he nailed to the mast
Stuck in his ways like he’s stuck in the past
A thumbnail sketch of the demise of Philip Larkin, a wonderful poet but revealed after his death to have been a racist bigot.
The man who wrote of the new-born lamb’s awakening to ‘earth’s immeasurable surprise’ admitted to periodically heaving up “gouts of bile”, or “spots of commonness,”
as he snobbishly called his hateful outbursts.
In our quest to search out a fishermen’s choir for the chorus we chanced upon a parcel of rogues dressed all in black and in fine voice and humour.
The Oysterband! Squeezed into the vocal booth at Shabby Road, belting it out as if from the prow of a Hull-bound boat.
Left to their own devices, they’d be in there still, adding line upon line. Only a cry of “Pubs are open, lads!” tempted them back
into the daylight.