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Message: <blockquote data-quote="morrolan" data-source="post: 2979078" data-attributes="member: 1847">Philip Larkin - This Be The VerseThey f*ck you up, your mum and dad.  They may not mean to, but they do.They fill you with the faults they had  And add some extra, just for you.But they were f*cked up in their turn  By fools in old-style hats and coats,Who half the time were soppy-stern  And half at one another's throats.Man hands on misery to man.  It deepens like a coastal shelf.Get out as early as you can,  And don't have any kids yourself.I like Auden best though:Musee de Beaux ArtsAbout suffering they were never wrong,The Old Masters; how well, they understoodIts human position; how it takes placeWhile someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along;How, when the aged are reverently, passionately waitingFor the miraculous birth, there always must beChildren who did not specially want it to happen, skatingOn a pond at the edge of the wood:They never forgotThat even the dreadful martyrdom must run its courseAnyhow in a corner, some untidy spotWhere the dogs go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horseScratches its innocent behind on a tree.In Breughel's Icarus, for instance: how everything turns awayQuite leisurely from the disaster; the ploughman mayHave heard the splash, the forsaken cry,But for him it was not an important failure; the sun shoneAs it had to on the white legs disappearing into the greenWater; and the expensive delicate ship that must have seenSomething amazing, a boy falling out of the sky,had somewhere to get to and sailed calmly on.</blockquote>

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