Down In The Dumps

West 91st Street: Another quiet afternoon in the 'hood.

Verse Reverse

In February I saw the play Grace, starring Lynn Redgrave at the Lucille Lortel Theater. It's a scalding emotional drama (Redgrave was amazing) about how a mother with a public reputation as an atheist reacts to her son's announcement that he is becoming an Anglican priest. In an interesting twist in the story, the son's fiancée recites the poem This Be the Verse by Philip Larkin. I have always liked that poem. It's ostensibly about what breeding does to human beings, but I think it's really about the twisted psychological manipulations parents resort to to stay sane and in control around their children. The child eventually grows up to view its parent as the cause of their own fuckings-up. Since I got over my Oedipal/Electra complexes, I have thought Larkin's poem is unfair to parents, in most cases, and here is my retort.

This Be The Reverse

They’re not so bad, your mum and dad,

For having made someone like you.

They did their best with what they had,

Despite the hell you put them through.

And in their turn they may have sworn

At their old folks as you now do.

Those whom in silence they now mourn

And say you bear resemblance to.

We make our misery day by day

And blame our parent's mental health

Get to a church and start to pray

Your own kids don’t become yourself