Resolutions should be painful
Otherwise they wouldn’t require you to be resolute, they’d only require acquiescence, like all the activities that lead to resolutions, you know, activities that are, shall we say, gainful
So that now your middle
Resembles a fiddle
Of the bass variety
And contra propriety
Announces your entrance into rooms before you’ve even entirely arrived
So that your wife starts in eyeing you like maybe she’s considering becoming unwived.
So you wait for January 1
To come and end your fun
And resolve to start slow so as not to overdo it
Because at your age, the thing about pain is you can’t always play, walk, run, or jog through it.
But far more discouraging than the next-day soreness that wracks you
Is the fact that your dog is so confused and upset by the sight of you getting down on the ground to attempt a sit-up that it goes and attacks you.
I feel as though the photo must be some perverse rorschach test.
Caterwaul or a doggerel?
Philip Larkin, ‘Missing Chairs’, in Required Writing: Miscellaneous Pieces 1955-1982 (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 1984), 134-135.
TAGGED WITH: OAFISHNESS SELLS GOOD – LIKE AN ADVERTISEMENT SHOULD