20 SEPTEMBER 1986, Page 26

In Memoriam, Philip Larkin Poor Philip, being never much on

looks, rather like our Alfred, skinny and bald, no girls will grieve him, a head full of books, at seventeen he was forty years old.

He did not go for life, and thought of death as most men think of sex, for life was dull, and sex was duller still; he saved his breath, he ate, smoked, went along, at last was ill.

So, Lord, if in the end you must exist, be kindly to him now, whose only sin, (remember, after all, he died unkissed) was not to praise the muck you dropped him in.

R. Griffiths