Poems by Philip Larkin



Church Going



Once i am sure there's nothing going on

I step inside letting the door thud shut.

Another church: matting seats and stone

and little books; sprawlings of flowers cut

For Sunday brownish now; some brass and stuff

Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;

And a tense musty unignorable silence

Brewed God knows how long. Hatless I take off

My cylce-clips in awkward revrence



Move forward run my hand around the font.

From where i stand the roof looks almost new--

Cleaned or restored? someone would know: I don't.

Mounting the lectern I peruse a few

hectoring large-scale verses and pronouce

Here endeth much more loudly than I'd meant

The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door

I sign the book donate an Irish sixpence

Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.



Yet stop I did: in fact I often do

And always end much at a loss like this

Wondering what to look for; wondering too

When churches fall completely out of use

What we shall turn them into if we shall keep

A few cathedrals chronically on show

Their parchment plate and pyx in locked cases

And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.

Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?



Or after dark will dubious women come

To make their children touvh a particular stone;

Pick simples for a cancer; or on some

Advised night see walking a dead one?

Power of some sort or other will go on

In games in riddles seemingly at random;

But superstition like belief must die

And what remains when disbelief has gone?

Grass weedy pavement brambles butress sky.



A shape less recognisable each week

A purpose more obscure. I wonder who

Will be the last the very last to seek

This place for whta it was; one of the crew

That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?

Some ruin-bibber randy for antique

Or Christmas-addict counting on a whiff

Of grown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?

Or will he be my representative



Bored uninformed knowing the ghostly silt

Dispersed yet tending to this cross of ground

Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt

So long and equably what since is found

Only in separation--marriage and birth

And death and thoughts of these--for which was built

This special shell? For though I've no idea

What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth

It pleases me to stand in silence here;



A serious house on serious earth it is

In whose blent air all our compulsions meet

Are recognisd and robed as destinies.

And that much never can be obsolete

Since someone will forever be surprising

A hunger in himself to be more serious

And gravitating with it to this ground

Which he once heard was proper to grow wise in

If only that so many dead lie round.



1955

MCMXIV



Those long uneven lines

Standing as patiently

As if they were stretched outside

The Oval or Villa Park

The crowns of hats the sun

On moustached archaic faces

Grinning as if it were all

An August bank Holiday lark;



And the shut shops the bleached

Established names on the sunblinds

The farthings and sovereigns

Adn dark-clothed children at play

Called after kings and queens

The tin advertisements

For cocoa and twist and the pubs

Wide open all day;



And the countryside ont caring:

The place-names all hazed over

With flowering grasses and fields

Shadowing Domesday lines

Under wheat's restless silence;

The differently-dressed servants

With tiny rooms in huge houses

The dust behind limousines;



Never such innocence

Never before or since

As changed itself to past

Without a word--the men

Leaving the gardens tidy

The thousands of marriages

Lasting a littlewhile longer:

Never such innocence again.



1964

Talking in Bed



Talking in bed ought ot be easiest

Lying together there goes back so far

An emblem of two people being honest.



Yet more and more time passes silently.

Outside the wind's incomplete unrest

builds and disperses clouds about the sky.



And dark towns heap up on the horizon.

None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why

At this unique distance from isolation



It becomes still more difficult to find

Words at once true and kind

Or ont untrue and not unkind.



1964

Ambulances



Closed like confessionals, they thread

Loud noons of cities, giving back

None of the glances they absorb.

Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,

They come to rest at any kerb:

All streets in time are visited.



Then children strewn on steps or road,

Or women coming from the shops

Past smells of different dinners, see

A wild white face that overtops

Red stretcher-blankets momently

As it is carried in and stowed,



And sense the solving emptiness

That lies just under all we do,

And for a second get it whole,

So permanent and blank and true.

The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,

They whisper at their own distress;



For borne away in deadened air

May go the sudden shut of loss

Round something nearly at an end,

And what cohered in it across

The years, the unique random blend

Of families and fashions, there



At last begin to loosen. Far

From the exchange of love to lie

Unreachable insided a room

The trafic parts to let go by

Brings closer what is left to come,

And dulls to distance all we are.



1964

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

An 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 side

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.



1974



The Explosion



On the day of the explosion

Shadows pointed towards the pithead:

In thesun the slagheap slept.



Down the lane came men in pitboots

Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke

Shouldering off the freshened silence.



One chased after rabbits; lost them;

Came back with a nest of lark's eggs;

Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.



SO they passed in beards and moleskins

Fathers brothers nicknames laughter

Through the tall gates standing open.



At noon there came a tremor; cows

Stopped chewing for a second; sun

Scarfed as in a heat-haze dimmed.



The dead go on before us they

Are sitting in God's house in comfort

We shall see them face to face--



plian as lettering in the chapels

It was said and for a second

Wives saw men of the explosion



Larger than in life they managed--

Gold as on a coin or walking

Somehow from the sun towards them



One showing the eggs unbroken.



1974