Philip Larkin Poems: Selected by Martin Amis

by Philip Larkin

  They hardly meant has come to be

  Their final blazon, and to prove

  Our almost-instinct almost true:

  What will survive of us is love.

  from HIGH WINDOWS

  To the Sea

  To step over the low wall that divides

  Road from concrete walk above the shore

  Brings sharply back something known long before –

  The miniature gaiety of seasides.

  Everything crowds under the low horizon:

  Steep beach, blue water, towels, red bathing caps,

  The small hushed waves’ repeated fresh collapse

  Up the warm yellow sand, and further off

  A white steamer stuck in the afternoon –

  Still going on, all of it, still going on!

  To lie, eat, sleep in hearing of the surf

  (Ears to transistors, that sound tame enough

  Under the sky), or gently up and down

  Lead the uncertain children, frilled in white

  And grasping at enormous air, or wheel

  The rigid old along for them to feel

  A final summer, plainly still occurs

  As half an annual pleasure, half a rite,

  As when, happy at being on my own,

  I searched the sand for Famous Cricketers,

  Or, farther back, my parents, listeners

  To the same seaside quack, first became known.

  Strange to it now, I watch the cloudless scene:

  The same clear water over smoothed pebbles,

  The distant bathers’ weak protesting trebles

  Down at its edge, and then the cheap cigars,

  The chocolate-papers, tea-leaves, and, between

  The rocks, the rusting soup-tins, till the first

  Few families start the trek back to the cars.

  The white steamer has gone. Like breathed-on glass

  The sunlight has turned milky. If the worst

  Of flawless weather is our falling short,

  It may be that through habit these do best,

  Coming to water clumsily undressed

  Yearly; teaching their children by a sort

  Of clowning; helping the old, too, as they ought.

  The Trees

  The trees are coming into leaf

  Like something almost being said;

  The recent buds relax and spread,

  Their greenness is a kind of grief.

  Is it that they are born again

  And we grow old? No, they die too.

  Their yearly trick of looking new

  Is written down in rings of grain.

  Yet still the unresting castles thresh

  In fullgrown thickness every May.

  Last year is dead, they seem to say,

  Begin afresh, afresh, afresh.

  Livings

  I

  I deal with farmers, things like dips and feed.

  Every third month I book myself in at

  The —— Hotel in —ton for three days.

  The boots carries my lean old leather case

  Up to a single, where I hang my hat.

  One beer, and then ‘the dinner’, at which I read

  The —shire Times from soup to stewed pears.

  Births, deaths. For sale. Police court. Motor spares.

  Afterwards, whisky in the Smoke Room: Clough,

  Margetts, the Captain, Dr. Watterson;

  Who makes ends meet, who’s taking the knock,

  Government tariffs, wages, price of stock.

  Smoke hangs under the light. The pictures on

  The walls are comic – hunting, the trenches, stuff

  Nobody minds or notices. A sound

  Of dominoes from the Bar. I stand a round.

  Later, the square is empty: a big sky

  Drains down the estuary like the bed

  Of a gold river, and the Customs House

  Still has its office lit. I drowse

  Between ex-Army sheets, wondering why

  I think it’s worthwhile coming. Father’s dead:

  He used to, but the business now is mine.

  It’s time for change, in nineteen twenty-nine.

  II

  Seventy feet down

  The sea explodes upwards,

  Relapsing, to slaver

  Off landing-stage steps –

  Running suds, rejoice!

  Rocks writhe back to sight.

  Mussels, limpets,

  Husband their tenacity

  In the freezing slither –

  Creatures, I cherish you!

  By day, sky builds

  Grape-dark over the salt

  Unsown stirring fields.

  Radio rubs its legs,

  Telling me of elsewhere:

  Barometers falling,

  Ports wind-shuttered,

  Fleets pent like hounds,

  Fires in humped inns

  Kippering sea-pictures –

  Keep it all off!

  By night, snow swerves

  (O loose moth world)

  Through the stare travelling

  Leather-black waters.

  Guarded by brilliance

  I set plate and spoon,

  And after, divining-cards.

  Lit shelved liners

  Grope like mad worlds westward.

  III

  Tonight we dine without the Master

  (Nocturnal vapours do not please);

  The port goes round so much the faster,

  Topics are raised with no less ease –

  Which advowson looks the fairest,

  What the wood from Snape will fetch,

  Names for pudendum mulieris,

  Why is Judas like Jack Ketch?

  The candleflames grow thin, then broaden:

  Our butler Starveling piles the logs

  And sets behind the screen a jordan

  (Quicker than going to the bogs).

  The wine heats temper and complexion:

  Oath-enforced assertions fly

  On rheumy fevers, resurrection,

  Regicide and rabbit pie.

  The fields around are cold and muddy,

  The cobbled streets close by are still,

  A sizar shivers at his study,

  The kitchen cat has made a kill;

  The bells discuss the hour’s gradations,

  Dusty shelves hold prayers and proofs:

  Above, Chaldean constellations

  Sparkle over crowded roofs.

  Forget What Did

  Stopping the diary

  Was a stun to memory,

  Was a blank starting,

  One no longer cicatrised

  By such words, such actions

  As bleakened waking.

  I wanted them over,

  Hurried to burial

  And looked back on

  Like the wars and winters

  Missing behind the windows

  Of an opaque childhood.

  And the empty pages?

  Should they ever be filled

  Let it be with observed

  Celestial recurrences,

  The day the flowers come,

  And when the birds go.

  High Windows

  When I see a couple of kids

  And guess he’s fucking her and she’s

  Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,

  I know this is paradise

  Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives –

  Bonds and gestures pushed to one side

  Like an outdated combine harvester,

  And everyone young going down the long slide

  To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if

  Anyone looked at me, forty years back,

  And thought, That’ll be the life;

  No God any more, or sweating in the dark

  About hell and that, or having to hide

  What you think of the priest. He

  And his lot will all go down the
long slide

  Like free bloody birds. And immediately

  Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

  The sun-comprehending glass,

  And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

  Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

  Friday Night in the Royal Station Hotel

  Light spreads darkly downwards from the high

  Clusters of lights over empty chairs

  That face each other, coloured differently.

  Through open doors, the dining-room declares

  A larger loneliness of knives and glass

  And silence laid like carpet. A porter reads

  An unsold evening paper. Hours pass,

  And all the salesmen have gone back to Leeds,

  Leaving full ashtrays in the Conference Room.

  In shoeless corridors, the lights burn. How

  Isolated, like a fort, it is –

  The headed paper, made for writing home

  (If home existed) letters of exile: Now

  Night comes on. Waves fold behind villages.

  The Old Fools

  What do they think has happened, the old fools,

  To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose

  It’s more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,

  And you keep on pissing yourself, and can’t remember

  Who called this morning? Or that, if they only chose,

  They could alter things back to when they danced all night,

  Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September?

  Or do they fancy there’s really been no change,

  And they’ve always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,

  Or sat through days of thin continuous dreaming

  Watching light move? If they don’t (and they can’t), it’s strange:

  Why aren’t they screaming?

  At death, you break up: the bits that were you

  Start speeding away from each other for ever

  With no one to see. It’s only oblivion, true:

  We had it before, but then it was going to end,

  And was all the time merging with a unique endeavour

  To bring to bloom the million-petalled flower

  Of being here. Next time you can’t pretend

  There’ll be anything else. And these are the first signs:

  Not knowing how, not hearing who, the power

  Of choosing gone. Their looks show that they’re for it:

  Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines –

  How can they ignore it?

  Perhaps being old is having lighted rooms

  Inside your head, and people in them, acting.

  People you know, yet can’t quite name; each looms

  Like a deep loss restored, from known doors turning,

  Setting down a lamp, smiling from a stair, extracting

  A known book from the shelves; or sometimes only

  The rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,

  The blown bush at the window, or the sun’s

  Faint friendliness on the wall some lonely

  Rain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:

  Not here and now, but where all happened once.

  This is why they give

  An air of baffled absence, trying to be there

  Yet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leaving

  Incompetent cold, the constant wear and tear

  Of taken breath, and them crouching below

  Extinction’s alp, the old fools, never perceiving

  How near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet:

  The peak that stays in view wherever we go

  For them is rising ground. Can they never tell

  What is dragging them back, and how it will end? Not at night?

  Not when the strangers come? Never, throughout

  The whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,

  We shall find out.

  Going, Going

  I thought it would last my time –

  The sense that, beyond the town,

  There would always be fields and farms,

  Where the village louts could climb

  Such trees as were not cut down;

  I knew there’d be false alarms

  In the papers about old streets

  And split-level shopping, but some

  Have always been left so far;

  And when the old part retreats

  As the bleak high-risers come

  We can always escape in the car.

  Things are tougher than we are, just

  As earth will always respond

  However we mess it about;

  Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:

  The tides will be clean beyond.

  – But what do I feel now? Doubt?

  Or age, simply? The crowd

  Is young in the M1 café;

  Their kids are screaming for more –

  More houses, more parking allowed,

  More caravan sites, more pay.

  On the Business Page, a score

  Of spectacled grins approve

  Some takeover bid that entails

  Five per cent profit (and ten

  Per cent more in the estuaries): move

  Your works to the unspoilt dales

  (Grey area grants)! And when

  You try to get near the sea

  In summer …

  It seems, just now,

  To be happening so very fast;

  Despite all the land left free

  For the first time I feel somehow

  That it isn’t going to last,

  That before I snuff it, the whole

  Boiling will be bricked in

  Except for the tourist parts –

  First slum of Europe: a role

  It won’t be so hard to win,

  With a cast of crooks and tarts.

  And that will be England gone,

  The shadows, the meadows, the lanes

  The guildhalls, the carved choirs.

  There’ll be books; it will linger on

  In galleries; but all that remains

  For us will be concrete and tyres.

  Most things are never meant.

  This won’t be, most likely: but greeds

  And garbage are too thick-strewn

  To be swept up now, or invent

  Excuses that make them all needs.

  I just think it will happen, soon.

  The Card-Players

  Jan van Hogspeuw staggers to the door

  And pisses at the dark. Outside, the rain

  Courses in cart-ruts down the deep mud lane.

  Inside, Dirk Dogstoerd pours himself some more,

  And holds a cinder to his clay with tongs,

  Belching out smoke. Old Prijck snores with the gale,

  His skull face firelit; someone behind drinks ale,

  And opens mussels, and croaks scraps of songs

  Towards the ham-hung rafters about love.

  Dirk deals the cards. Wet century-wide trees

  Clash in surrounding starlessness above

  This lamplit cave, where Jan turns back and farts,

  Gobs at the grate, and hits the queen of hearts.

  Rain, wind and fire! The secret, bestial peace!

  The Building

  Higher than the handsomest hotel

  The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see,

  All round it close-ribbed streets rise and fall

  Like a great sigh out of the last century.

  The porters are scruffy; what keep drawing up

  At the entrance are not taxis; and in the hall

  As well as creepers hangs a frightening smell.

  There are paperbacks, and tea at so much a cup,

  Like an airport lounge, but those who tamely sit

  On rows of steel chairs turning the ripped mags

  Haven’t come far. More lik
e a local bus,

  These outdoor clothes and half-filled shopping bags

  And faces restless and resigned, although

  Every few minutes comes a kind of nurse

  To fetch someone away: the rest refit

  Cups back to saucers, cough, or glance below

  Seats for dropped gloves or cards. Humans, caught

  On ground curiously neutral, homes and names

  Suddenly in abeyance; some are young,

  Some old, but most at that vague age that claims

  The end of choice, the last of hope; and all

  Here to confess that something has gone wrong.

  It must be error of a serious sort,

  For see how many floors it needs, how tall

  It’s grown by now, and how much money goes

  In trying to correct it. See the time,

  Half-past eleven on a working day,

  And these picked out of it; see, as they climb

  To their appointed levels, how their eyes

  Go to each other, guessing; on the way

  Someone’s wheeled past, in washed-to-rags ward clothes: