And overlook my paunch because I write.

One doesn’t need much literary skill

To be the Casanova of Tulse Hill.

(iv) Not only marble,

Not only marble, but the plastic toys

From cornflake packets will outlive this rhyme:

I can’t immortalize you, love – our joys

Will lie unnoticed in the vault of time.

When Mrs Thatcher has been cast in bronze

And her administration is a page

In some O-level text-book, when the dons

Have analysed the story of our age,

When travel firms sell tours of outer space

And aeroplanes take off without a sound

And Tulse Hill has become a trendy place

And Upper Norwood’s on the underground

Your beauty and my name will be forgotten –

My love is true, but all my verse is rotten.

(v) How like a sprinter,

How like a sprinter you have turned and run

From me, who’d loved you almost half a year.

The world’s become a fridge, there is no sun,

I hardly have the stomach for a beer.

And yet I still have my guitar to strum

And books to read and some fantastic grass

That Tony got me. I sit here and hum

The tunes we used to hear in Norwood bars –

We Are All Slobs, The Muggers’ greatest hit –

Do you remember? Once you said to me,

‘This is their best since Education’s Shit’,

And I agreed. But I am forty-three

And blew it when I told you I’d much rather

Listen to a jazz band, like your father.

(vi) Let me not,

Let me not to the marriage of true swine

Admit impediments. With his big car

He’s won your heart, and you have punctured mine.

I have no spare; henceforth I’ll bear the scar.

Since women are not worth the booze you buy them

I dedicate myself to Higher Things.

If men deride and sneer, I shall defy them

And soar above Tulse Hill on poet’s wings –

A brother to the thrush in Brockwell Park,

Whose song, though sometimes drowned by rock guitars,

Outlives their din. One day I’ll make my mark,

Although I’m not from Ulster or from Mars,

And when I’m published in some classy mag

You’ll rue the day you scarpered in his Jag.

(vii) Indeed ’tis true,

At the moment, if you’re seen reading poetry in a train, the carriage empties instantly.

Andrew Motion in a Guardian interview

Indeed ’tis true. I travel here and there

On British Rail a lot. I’ve often said

That if you haven’t got the first-class fare

You really need a book of verse instead.

Then, should you find that all the seats are taken,

Brandish your Edward Thomas, Yeats or Pound.

Your fellow-passengers, severely shaken,

Will almost all be loath to stick around.

Recent research in railway sociology

Shows it’s best to read the stuff aloud:

A few choice bits from Motion’s new anthology

And you’ll be lonelier than any cloud.

This stratagem’s a godsend to recluses

And demonstrates that poetry has its uses.