Christmas with the In-Laws Up North
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets
generations have trod, have trod, have trod,
for a journey, and such a long journey.
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
knock-kneed, coughing like hags. We cursed through sludge
where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies.
And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Dear God! The very houses seem asleep.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
and eat three pounds of sausages at a go.
The Love Song of J Alfred Prufrock, Eliot / God’s Grandeur, Hopkins / Journey of the Magi, Eliot / Whitsun Weddings, Larkin / Dulce et Decorum Est, Owen / Ode to a Nightingale, Keats / Anthem for Doomed Youth, Owen / Upon Westminster Bridge, Wordsworth / Ulysses, Tennyson / Warning, Jenny Joseph.
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