My Santiago

or He chucked up everything and just cleared off or He walked out on the whole crowd or take that you bastard

Yet Larkin likes the imperfect life of work, its honesty and substance. The other, too reprehensibly perfect.

And maybe it is; this audacious creation of a life. Maybe it is artificial, for him at least.

Maybe chucking it up and leaving in this elemental way is only a refusal to face up to one’s life. A refusal to wait until the skin works loose into an old bag - carrying a soiled name. And maybe, just maybe, things won’t come right again If one Could only keep quite still and wait.