National Poetry Month: High Windows by Philip Larkin
Argh, cannot decide: do I want to go out and see the friends who I haven’t seen for like ten days (keeping in mind I’m WAY POOR, and all my clothes, including my only proper coat, are in the laundry) or stay in and write? I’m really behind on NaNo. I should stay in, I just want to see my friends.
ANYWAY.
Here’s some Philip Larkin after all. The man was a genius, for all that he lived in Hull.
High Windows by Philip Larkin
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
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Like an outdated combine harvester,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, That'll 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.
This is such classic Larkin. I like the shock of it - ‘a couple of kids’ to ‘fucking her’ in sixty seconds (or one line). The narrator’s gruff voice, and the second narrator’s voice - the cycle of it, but the sense of progress - appeal to me so much, and are so very English. It’s all very English, actually: ‘high windows’ are the windows they had at schools in the fifties, high up so the pupils couldn’t stare out of them and daydream.
That last verse - ‘blue air’ and ‘sun-comprehending glass’ kills me dead.
ANYWAY.
Here’s some Philip Larkin after all. The man was a genius, for all that he lived in Hull.
High Windows by Philip Larkin
When I see a couple of kids
And guess he's fucking her and she's
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Like an outdated combine harvester,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, That'll 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.
This is such classic Larkin. I like the shock of it - ‘a couple of kids’ to ‘fucking her’ in sixty seconds (or one line). The narrator’s gruff voice, and the second narrator’s voice - the cycle of it, but the sense of progress - appeal to me so much, and are so very English. It’s all very English, actually: ‘high windows’ are the windows they had at schools in the fifties, high up so the pupils couldn’t stare out of them and daydream.
That last verse - ‘blue air’ and ‘sun-comprehending glass’ kills me dead.