truest, or most want to do:
Those warp tight-shut, like doors. Theyâre more a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all weâve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying
For Dockery a son, for me nothing,
Nothing with all a sonâs harsh patronage.
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.
I donât, alas, know much about the technicalities of poetry. Like most people, I recognise a thumping metre and an obvious rhyme and not much more. But poetry isnât just prose thatâs been through the shredder, and itâs only after reading Larkinâs poems a few times that one senses how well theyâre constructed, the rhymes lurking just under the surface so that what seems casual and even discursive is actually carefully structured. Larkinâs remark about MacNeice â âHe always brings the kite down safelyâ â applies equally well to Larkin himself.
Larkin generally feels, or affects to feel, shut out, though the language he uses in order to say so signals that he still wants to be recognised as a member of the human race, and a pretty straightforward one at that. He has one poem which begins:
When I see a couple of kids
And guess heâs fucking her and sheâs
Taking the pill or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives â
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly â¦
Well. Not quite. Yes, one wants to say, but ⦠Of course, Larkin wrote that in 1967, a few months before this:
Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me) â
Between the end of the
Chatterley
ban
And the Beatlesâ first LP.
Up till then thereâd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for a ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) â
Between the end of the
Chatterley
ban
And the Beatlesâ first LP.
Larkin didnât want to be thought nice, and sometimes wasnât. A friend of mine â the writer Neville Smith â was a student at Hull and found himself at a bus stop with Larkin. It was pouring with rain and Larkin had an umbrella. Neville edged closer and closer to the poet until finally Larkin said, âDonât think youâre coming under my umbrella.â
âDonât think youâre coming under my umbrellaâ could serve as a description of a number of his poems. The temptation of all art is to console, but Larkinâs poems seldom attempt to.
This next poem would, I suppose, nowadays be called a âgreenâ poem, though properly construed, all poems are green. It was written in 1971, when its sentiments were rather less modish than they are today.
Going, Going
I thought it would last my time â
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 thereâd 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.
â But what do I feel now? Doubt?
Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 café;
Their kids are screaming
Those warp tight-shut, like doors. Theyâre more a style
Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,
Suddenly they harden into all weâve got
And how we got it; looked back on, they rear
Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying
For Dockery a son, for me nothing,
Nothing with all a sonâs harsh patronage.
Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.
I donât, alas, know much about the technicalities of poetry. Like most people, I recognise a thumping metre and an obvious rhyme and not much more. But poetry isnât just prose thatâs been through the shredder, and itâs only after reading Larkinâs poems a few times that one senses how well theyâre constructed, the rhymes lurking just under the surface so that what seems casual and even discursive is actually carefully structured. Larkinâs remark about MacNeice â âHe always brings the kite down safelyâ â applies equally well to Larkin himself.
Larkin generally feels, or affects to feel, shut out, though the language he uses in order to say so signals that he still wants to be recognised as a member of the human race, and a pretty straightforward one at that. He has one poem which begins:
When I see a couple of kids
And guess heâs fucking her and sheâs
Taking the pill or wearing a diaphragm,
I know this is paradise
Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives â
Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
Like an outdated combine harvester,
And everyone young going down the long slide
To happiness, endlessly â¦
Well. Not quite. Yes, one wants to say, but ⦠Of course, Larkin wrote that in 1967, a few months before this:
Annus Mirabilis
Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me) â
Between the end of the
Chatterley
ban
And the Beatlesâ first LP.
Up till then thereâd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for a ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) â
Between the end of the
Chatterley
ban
And the Beatlesâ first LP.
Larkin didnât want to be thought nice, and sometimes wasnât. A friend of mine â the writer Neville Smith â was a student at Hull and found himself at a bus stop with Larkin. It was pouring with rain and Larkin had an umbrella. Neville edged closer and closer to the poet until finally Larkin said, âDonât think youâre coming under my umbrella.â
âDonât think youâre coming under my umbrellaâ could serve as a description of a number of his poems. The temptation of all art is to console, but Larkinâs poems seldom attempt to.
This next poem would, I suppose, nowadays be called a âgreenâ poem, though properly construed, all poems are green. It was written in 1971, when its sentiments were rather less modish than they are today.
Going, Going
I thought it would last my time â
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 thereâd 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.
â But what do I feel now? Doubt?
Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 café;
Their kids are screaming
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