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Philip Larkin - Letter To A Friend About Girls
Work rating: Low

After comparing lives with you for years 
I see how I’ve been losing: all the while 
I’ve met a different gauge of girl from yours. 
Grant that, and all the rest makes sense as well: 
My mortification at your pushovers, 
Your mystification at my fecklessness— 
Everything proves we play in separate leagues. 
Before, I couldn’t credit your intrigues 
Because I thought all girls the same, but yes, 
You bag real birds, though they’re from alien covers. 


Now I believe your staggering skirmishes 
In train, tutorial and telephone booth, 
The wife whose husband watched away matches 
While she behaved so badly in a bath, 
And all the rest who beckon from that world 
Described on Sundays only, where to want 
Is straightway to be wanted, seek to find, 
And no one gets upset or seems to mind 
At what you say to them, or what you don’t: 
A world where all the nonsense is annulled, 


And beauty is accepted slang for yes. 
But equally, haven’t you noticed mine? 
They have their world, not much compared with yours, 
But where they work, and age, and put off men 
By being unattractive, or too shy, 
Or having morals—anyhow, none give in: 
Some of them go quite rigid with disgust 
At anything but marriage: that’s all lust 
And so not worth considering; they begin 
Fetching your hat, so that you have to lie 


Till everything’s confused: you mine away 
For months, both of you, till the collapse comes 
Into remorse, tears, and wondering why 
You ever start such boring barren games 
—But there, don’t mind my saeva indignatio: 
I’m happier now I’ve got things clear, although 
It’s strange we never meet each other’s sort: 
There should be equal chances, I’d’ve thought. 
Must finish now. One day perhaps I’ll know 
What makes you be so lucky in your ratio 


—One of those ‘more things’, could it be? Horatio.
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