Philip Larkin

My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You’d care to join us? In a pig’s arse, friend.
Day comes to an end.…

Lambs that learn to walk in
When their bleating clouds the
Meet a vast unwelcome,
Nothing but a sunless glare.

That Whitsun,
I was late getting away:
Not till
One-twenty on the sunlit

I saw three ships go sailing by,
Over the sea, the lifting sea,
And the wind rose in the morning sky,
And one was rigged for a long journey.The first ship turned towards the west,…

Love, we must part now: do not let it be Calamitious and bitter.
In the past There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:
Let us have done with it: for now at last Never has sun more boldly paced the sky,
Never were hearts more…

Marrying left your maiden name disused.
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.

You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking; nor as a clause…

The wind blew all my wedding-day,
And my wedding-night was the night of the high wind;
And a stable door was banging, again and again,
That he must go and shut it, leaving me…

Groping back to bed after a piss
I part the thick curtains, and am startled by
The rapid clouds, the moon's cleanliness.Four o'clock: wedge-shaped gardens lie
Under a cavernous, a wind-pierced sky.…

'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he?' said the Dean. 'His son's here now.'Death-suited, visitant,
I nod. 'And
You keep in touch with-' Or remember

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this?
Do they somehow
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools

Come to Sunny
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the
In tautened white satin.

Down stucco sidestreets,
Where light is
And afternoon
Brings lights on in

Always too eager for the future,
Pick up bad habits of expectancy.
Something is always approaching; every
Till then we say

Печален дом. Внутри он сохранил
Уют жильца, ушедшего давно.
Дом долго ждал. Но он давно не мил.
И так устал, что даже не дано…

At last you yielded up the album,
Once open, sent me distracted.
All your
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages!

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the

The trumpet's voice, loud and authoritative,
Draws me a moment to the lighted
To watch the dancers - all under twenty-five -Solemnly on the beat of happiness.- Or so I fancy, sensing the smoke and sweat,
The wonderful feel of girls.

The eye can hardly pick them out
From the cold shade they shelter in,
Till wind distresses tail and mane;
Then one crops grass, and moves about…

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake
Time and time over.

'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayed
The whole time he was at the Bodies, till
They moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,
Fall to within five inches of the sill,Whose window shows a strip of building land,…

Strange to know nothing, never to be
Of what is true or right or real,
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
Or Well, it does seem so:

My wife and I have asked a crowd of
To come and waste their time and ours:
You'd care to join us?
In a pig's arse, friend.