Philip Larkin - High Windows

T o 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.

W hen I drop four cubes of ice Chimingly in a glass, and add Three goes of gin, a lemon slice, And let a ten-ounce tonic void In foaming gulps until it smothers Everything else up to the edge, I lift the lot in private pledge: He devoted his life to others.

W hen I drop four cubes of ice Chimingly in a glass, and add Three goes of gin, a lemon slice, And let a ten-ounce tonic void In foaming gulps until it smothers Everything else up to the edge, I lift the lot in private pledge: He devoted his life to others.

While other people wore like clothes The human beings in their days I set myself to bring to those Who thought I could the lost displays; It didnt work for them or me, But all concerned were nearer thus (Or so we thought) to all the fuss Than if wed missed it separately. A decent chap, a real good sort, Straight as a die, one of the best, A brick, a trump, a proper sport, Head and shoulders above the rest; How many lives would have been duller Had he not been here below? Heres to the whitest man I know Though white is not my favourite colour.

T he 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.

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. For sale. For sale.

Police court. Motor spares. Afterwards, whisky in the Smoke Room: Clough, Margetts, the Captain, Dr. Watterson; Who makes ends meet, whos taking the knock, Government tariffs, wages, price of stock. Smoke hangs under the light. The pictures on The walls are comichunting, 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 its worth while coming. Fathers dead: He used to, but the business now is mine.

Seventy feet down The sea explodes upwards, Relapsing, to slaver Off landing-stage steps Running suds, rejoice! Rocks writhe back to sight. 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.

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 hours gradations, Dusty shelves hold prayers and proofs: Above, Chaldean constellations Sparkle over crowded roofs.

S topping the diary Was a stun to memory, Was a blank starting, One no longer cicatrized 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.

W hen I see a couple of kids And guess hes fucking her and shes 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, Thatll 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.

L ight 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.