“ Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 782
“ I work all day, and get halfdrunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtainedges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast motheaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnacefear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In lockedup offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house. Aubade ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 2.4K
“ Morning, noon & bloody night, Seven sodding days a week, I slave at filthy WORK, that might Be done by any bookdrunk freak. This goes on until I kick the bucket. FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT FUCK IT ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.6K
“ So many things I had thought forgotten Return to my mind with stranger pain: Like letters that arrive addressed to someone Who left the house so many years ago. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.3K
“ Uncontradicting solitude Supports me on its giant palm; And like a seaanemone Or simple snail, there cautiously Unfolds, emerges, what I am. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 2.5K
“ Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The suncomprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 1.3K
“ Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken, Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken, Luminouslypeopled air ascends; And past the poppies bluish neutral distance Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence: Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.5K
“ Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almostinstinct almost true: What will survive of us is love. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 1.6K
“ Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, Refusing to make haste! Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, Each rope distinct, Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits Arching our way, it never anchors; it's No sooner present than it turns to past. Right to the last We think each one will heave to and unload All good into our lives, all we are owed For waiting so devoutly and so long. But we are wrong: Only one ship is seeking us, a black Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break. Next, Please ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.4K
“ Only in books the flat and final happens, Only in dreams we meet and interlock.... ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 320
“ What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this ? Do they somehow suppose It's more grownup 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 millionpetalled 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 Iamp, 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 Rainceased 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. The Old Fools ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.9K
“ I feel the only thing you can do about life is to preserve it, by art if you're an artist, by children if you're not. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.7K
“ When I throw back my head and howl People (women mostly) say But you've always done what you want, You always get your way A perfectly vile and foul Inversion of all that's been. What the old ratbags mean Is I've never done what I don't. So the shit in the shuttered chateau Who does his five hundred words Then parts out the rest of the day Between bathing and booze and birds Is far off as ever, but so Is that spectacled schoolteaching sod (Six kids, and the wife in pod, And her parents coming to stay)... Life is an immobile, locked, Threehanded struggle between Your wants, the world's for you, and (worse) The unbeatable slow machine That brings what you'll get. Blocked, They strain round a hollow stasis Of havingsto, fear, faces. Days sift down it constantly. Years. The Life with the Hole in It ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 1.1K
“ Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 2.1K
“ Everyone should be forcibly transplanted to another continent from their family at the age of three. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 4K
“ There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true! ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 1.4K
“ Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 1.5K
“ Sexual intercourse began in nineteen sixtythree (Which was rather late for me) between the end of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles' first LP. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.5K
“ What do they think has happened, the old fools, To make them like this? Do they somehow suppose It's more grownup 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 the light move? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange; Why aren't they screaming? ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 1.7K
“ I work all day, and get halfdrunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtainedges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dread Of dying, and being dead, Flashes afresh to hold and horrify. The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climb Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever, The sure extinction that we travel to And shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere, And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true. This is a special way of being afraid No trick dispels. Religion used to try, That vast motheaten musical brocade Created to pretend we never die, And specious stuff that says No rational being Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with, The anaesthetic from which none come round. And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages out In furnacefear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good: It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave. Death is no different whined at than withstood. Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go. Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In lockedup offices, and all the uncaring Intricate rented world begins to rouse. The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done. Postmen like doctors go from house to house. Aubade ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.8K
“ I'm terrified of the thought of time passing (or whatever is meant by that phrase) whether I 'do' anything or not. In a way I may believe, deep down, that doing nothing acts as a brake on 'time's it doesn't of course. It merely adds the torment of having done nothing, when the time comes when it really doesn't matter if you've done anything or not. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 3.1K
“ Always too eager for the future, we Pick up bad habits of expectancy. Something is always approaching; every day Till then we say, Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear, Sparkling armada of promises draw near. How slow they are! And how much time they waste, Refusing to make haste! Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalks Of disappointment, for, though nothing balks Each big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked, Each rope distinct, Flagged, and the figurehead with golden tits Arching our way, it never anchors; it's No sooner present than it turns to past. Right to the last We think each one will heave to and unload All good into our lives, all we are owed For waiting so devoutly and so long. But we are wrong: Only one ship is seeking us, a black Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break. Next, Please ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 2.1K
“ Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almostinstinct almost true: What will survive of us is love. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 884
“ Dear, I can't write, it's all a fantasy: a kind of circling obsession. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
“ There is bad in all good authors: what a pity the converse isn't true! ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
“ Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
“ Time has transfigured them into Untruth. The stone fidelity They hardly meant has come to be Their final blazon, and to prove Our almostinstinct almost true: What will survive of us is love. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 1.5K
“ Far too many relied on the classic formula of a beginning, a muddle, and an end. ”
- Philip Larkin- Copy
- 1.6K
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