As Bad as a Mile

A)Watching the shied core
A)Striking the basket, skidding across the floor,
A)Shows less and less of luck, and more and more

B)Of failure spreading back up the arm
B)Earlier and earlier, the unraised hand calm,
B)The apple unbitten in the palm.

This is a poem about failure and disappointment. The rhyming is the simple as is the poem, the fact the rhyme doesn't change may symbolise the unchanged outcome of throwing an apple in the basket. The idea of an unbitten apple is also a religious symbol representing Adam and Eve, the apple- a forbidden fruit was a temptation for Eve and resulted in failure and irreversible. Perhaps the idea of Larkin tempted to try and score the apple but resulting in failure represents this poem.