Summary

“This Be The Verse” opens with the speaker seemingly addressing the reader and affirming that “They fuck you up, your mum and dad” (1). The speaker clarifies that this trauma may not be intentional, but it happens all the same because your parents “fill you with the faults they had” (3) and give you “some extra, just for you” (4).

If the first quatrain, or four-line stanza, is about how your parents mess you up, the second quatrain reflects on how your parents were messed up by their own parents. “But they were fucked up in their turn” (5), the speaker explains, specifying that “fools in old-style hats and coats” (6) were responsible for messing up the previous generation, by being “soppy-stern” (7) half the time, “And half at one another’s throats” (8).

From this chain of adversity, the speaker extracts a lesson about human existence and shares it in...