Philip Larkin, perceptive old racist mysogynist that he was, said this:
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...
That was in a poem called 'Toads'. Towards the end of his life, he wrote a follow up- 'Toads Revisited'- and that sad document of emptiness ended like this:
...No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.
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...
That was in a poem called 'Toads'. Towards the end of his life, he wrote a follow up- 'Toads Revisited'- and that sad document of emptiness ended like this:
...No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,
When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.
