Philip Larkin Poems

That note you hold, narrowing and rising, shakes
Like New Orleans reflected on the water,
And in all ears appropriate falsehood wakes,
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Strange to know nothing, never to be sure
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:
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'Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain
consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to
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Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
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Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
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Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
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The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and main;
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Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
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New eyes each year
Find old books here,
And new books,too,
Old eyes renew;
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'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'
Death-suited, visitant, I nod. 'And do
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