Philip Larkin's "groping back to bed after a piss" is the line of poetry I recite most frequently these days.
Sometimes I might mumble Shelley's "My name is Ozymandias, king of kings" under my breath if I observe office hubris receiving its comeuppance.
Or I'll dramatically declaim John Keats' "The Eve of St Agnes, ah bitter chill it was" into the frigid air as I venture out on a cold winter evening.
And once in a while, I will even attempt William Butler Yeats' gloomy "Cast a cold eye on life, on death. Horseman, pass by" when I want to be left alone. Although I doubt anyone knows what I'm talking about.
But it's Larkin's "groping back to bed after a piss" that I quote every night of the week without fail.
It wasn't always thus. I once knew Shakespeare's sonnets and Byron's She Walks In Beauty. I supplied roses with Christina Rossetti's words and I did verses of John Donne.
Alas, no more. How soon the romance of youth is superseded by the bladder problems of middle age.
