Mr Bleaney

Mr Bleaney

 

-  Philip Larkin

'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed

The whole time he was at the Bodies, till

They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,

Fall to within five inches of the sill,

Whose window shows a strip of building land,

Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney took

My bit of garden properly in hand.'

Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hook

Behind the door, no room for books or bags -

'I'll take it.' So it happens that I lie

Where Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fags

On the same saucer-souvenir, and try

Stuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drown

The jabbering set he egged her on to buy.

I know his habits - what time he came down,

His preference for sauce to gravy, why

He kept on plugging at the four aways -

Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folk

Who put him up for summer holidays,

And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.

But if he stood and watched the frigid wind

Tousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bed

Telling himself that this was home, and grinned,

And shivered, without shaking off the dread

That how we live measures our own nature,

And at his age having no more to show

Than one hired box should make him pretty sure

He warranted no better, I don't know.

Days

Days

- Philip Larkin

What are days for?

Days are where we live.

They come, they wake us

Time and time over.

They are to be happy in:

Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question

Brings the priest and the doctor

In their long coats

Running over the fields.

Afternoons

Afternoons

-  Philip Larkin

Summer is fading:
The leaves fall in ones and twos
From trees bordering
The new recreation ground.
In the hollows of afternoons
Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children.

Behind them, at intervals,
Stand husbands in skilled trades,
An estateful of washing,
And the albums, lettered
Our Wedding, lying
Near the television:
Before them, the wind
Is ruining their courting-places

That are still courting-places
(But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acorns,
Expect to be taken home.
Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.

Deceptions

Deceptions

-  Philip Larkin

"Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain

consciousness until the next morning.  I was horrified to

discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable,

and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt."

 --Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

Even so distant, I can taste the grief,

Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.

The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief

Worry of wheels along the street outside

Where bridal London bows the other way,

And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,

Forbids the scar to heal, and drives

Shame out of hiding.  All the unhurried day,

Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

Slums, years, have buried you.  I would not dare

Console you if I could.  What can be said,

Except that suffering is exact, but where

Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?

For you would hardly care

That you were less deceived, out on that bed,

Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair

To burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.

Next, Please

Next, Please

- Philip Larkin

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 wit 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.