Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river's slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,
Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires -
Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers -
A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling
Where only salesmen and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives;
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,
Isolate villages, where removed lives
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
—Philip Larkin (1922-1985), "Here" from The Whitsun Weddings, 1964. (Dates of poem composition: 6 September 1961 to 8 October 1961.)
I compulsively buy poetry books in March and April, which results in me owning things like The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin because it was only $12.50 at the Strand last March. It's a beautiful, sunny, perfect spring day in New York City, and yet, I don't know; I was feeling this poem. I'm listening to Vienna Teng's Aims as I write this up, which seems startling apropos.
Here is Larkin on the poem in 1981, when "asked whether he intended the poem as a brief for retirement, the simpler life": "Oh no, not at all ... well, it depends what you mean by retirement. If you mean not living in London, I suppose it might be interpreted along those lines. I meant it just as a celebration of here, Hull. It's a fascinating area, not quite like anywhere else. So busy, yet so lonely. The poem is frightful to read aloud: the first sentence goes on for twenty-four-and-a-half lines, which is three-quarters of the poem, and the rest is full of consonants." He also called it "a pointless shapeless thing about Hull," which I sort of adore. A+ Larkin. I love the enjambment in this poem so much that I don't even mind that the first sentence goes on for twenty-four-and-a-half lines. (The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, edited by Archie Burnett (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 391-392.)
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river's slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,
Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires -
Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers -
A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling
Where only salesmen and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarfed wives;
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat-fields, running high as hedges,
Isolate villages, where removed lives
Loneliness clarifies. Here silence stands
Like heat. Here leaves unnoticed thicken,
Hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken,
Luminously-peopled air ascends;
And past the poppies bluish neutral distance
Ends the land suddenly beyond a beach
Of shapes and shingle. Here is unfenced existence:
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
—Philip Larkin (1922-1985), "Here" from The Whitsun Weddings, 1964. (Dates of poem composition: 6 September 1961 to 8 October 1961.)
I compulsively buy poetry books in March and April, which results in me owning things like The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin because it was only $12.50 at the Strand last March. It's a beautiful, sunny, perfect spring day in New York City, and yet, I don't know; I was feeling this poem. I'm listening to Vienna Teng's Aims as I write this up, which seems startling apropos.
Here is Larkin on the poem in 1981, when "asked whether he intended the poem as a brief for retirement, the simpler life": "Oh no, not at all ... well, it depends what you mean by retirement. If you mean not living in London, I suppose it might be interpreted along those lines. I meant it just as a celebration of here, Hull. It's a fascinating area, not quite like anywhere else. So busy, yet so lonely. The poem is frightful to read aloud: the first sentence goes on for twenty-four-and-a-half lines, which is three-quarters of the poem, and the rest is full of consonants." He also called it "a pointless shapeless thing about Hull," which I sort of adore. A+ Larkin. I love the enjambment in this poem so much that I don't even mind that the first sentence goes on for twenty-four-and-a-half lines. (The Complete Poems of Philip Larkin, edited by Archie Burnett (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2012), 391-392.)
No comments:
Post a Comment