words.
I saw this poem in the journal of a stranger, inside a long entry on change, and I felt like the world was smaller -- this is the first poem I ever heard of Larkin's, being read aloud by a semi-celebrity, and I still like it best.
Home is so sad
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped in the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft.
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
Everything changes, and mostly, I think, we try to alter the fact by keeping routines, or making changes on top of changes to hide the ones we're afraid of. I don't know if I'll agree with that once it's posted. It feels right, about now.
The biggest change for me now is how much harder it is to sit by myself, in the old routine, now that it's summer. I need to wake up to a new summer me that knows its place and how it fits.
Home is so sad
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped in the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft.
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
Everything changes, and mostly, I think, we try to alter the fact by keeping routines, or making changes on top of changes to hide the ones we're afraid of. I don't know if I'll agree with that once it's posted. It feels right, about now.
The biggest change for me now is how much harder it is to sit by myself, in the old routine, now that it's summer. I need to wake up to a new summer me that knows its place and how it fits.