Lines on an Unfinished Philip Larkin Cento Or, “Ah, Diddums!”

I open up my note book at random

and see/half-read an unfamiliar line:

Despite the artful tensions of the calendar…

Another line begins Inaccuracy…

Then something prods the memory – a cento

from Philip Larkin’s lines, left incomplete:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad

By being stupid or weak.

It used to make me throw up.

Not quite the order he intended – but –

far better capturing, I think, the whining

self-pity he so nearly perfected.