Under all that ketchup
I see only baloney
Said Larkin of Hughes
Though he might have said catsup
And he must have written it
And not just said it
So it ought to be easy to look up
But if he said it
Would an orthographic alternative
Have resulted in an alternative pronunciation
Although he certainly didn’t say it
Or write it
In Malay
Thereby trivializing perhaps attempts to standardize
Speech or spelling
But he certainly raised a question
Or in truth asserted an answer
About Warheit and Dichtung
In a concrete-to-concrete metaphor
The vehicle of which is a condiment
While the tenor is a vital bodily fluid
But aligned with a concrete-to-abstract metaphor
The vehicle of which is a luncheon meat
Orthographically and phonologically distorted
In its importation from Italian
Though perhaps one should note
The intervening Bowdlerization
Albeit conventional
Of bullshit to bull-oney
As damnation to tarnation
Or God damn to Goodness gracious sakes alive
While the tenor is falsehood
Thereby positioning himself as the less deceived
So Larkin put forth not unvarnished truth
But truth metaphorically varnished
Or might one say condiment-enhanced
The better to match  aggressive matter
To an insouciant manner
In order to attack an aggressive manner
That expresses tender-hearted matter
So that we are left to contemplate
Ted Hughes’s sensitive Augustan decorum
And Philip Larkin’s running amok