Philip Larkin, from "Be my Valentine this Monday", The Complete Poems [ID in ALT]
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The Winter Palace
by Philip Larkin
Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.
I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had learnt at university.
And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,
And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.
It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.
Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.
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coming by Philip Larkin
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"Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off."
Philip Larkin
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Happy Father's Day!
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“I have no enemies. But my friends don’t like me.”
— Philip Larkin
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"Come then to prayers"
by Philip Larkin
Come then to prayers
And kneel upon the stone,
For we have tried
All courages on these despairs,
And are required lastly to give up pride,
And the last difficult pride in being humble.
Draw down the window-frame
That we may be unparted from the darkness
Inviting to the house
Air from a field, air from a salt grave,
That questions if we have
Concealed no flaw in this confessional,
And, being satisfied,
Lingers, and troubles, and is lightless,
And so grows darker, as if clapped on a flame,
Whose great extinguishing still makes it tremble.
Only our hearts go beating towards the east.
Out of this darkness, let the unmeasured sword
Rising from sleep to execute our crown
Rest on our shoulders, as we then can rest
On the outdistancing, all-capable flood
Whose brim touches the morning. Down
The long shadows where undriven the dawn
Hunts light into nobility, arouse us noble.
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Talking in Bed by Philip Larkin
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.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
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“Poetry is nobody’s business except the poet’s, and everybody else can fuck off.”
― Philip Larkin
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"They fuck you up, your mum and dad."
Read it here | Reblog for a larger sample size!
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April 10, 2024: The Winter Palace, Philip Larkin
The Winter Palace
Philip Larkin
Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.
I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had learnt at university.
And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,
And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I’ve never been in certain places.
It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.
Then there will be nothing I know.
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.
--
Also by Philip Larkin:
+ This Be The Verse
+ The Trees, Philip Larkin
+ Aubade, Philip Larkin
Today in:
2023: On Keeping Pluto a Planet, Greg Beatty
2022: The Terrible Beauty of the Reserve, Billy-Ray Belcourt
2021: Puerto Rico Goes Dark, Juan J. Morales
2020: Winter Psalm, Richard Hoffman
2019: King Kreations, Angel Nafis
2018: Letter to Larry Levis, Matthew Olzmann
2017: Only she who has breast-fed, Vera Pavlova
2016: First Love, Jan Owen
2015: At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School, Sherman Alexie
2014: Boogaloo, Kevin Young
2013: The Fist, Derek Walcott
2012: Turning, W.S. Merwin
2011: Consolation for Tamar, A.E. Stallings
2010: Frida Kahlo to Marty McConnell, Marty McConnell
2009: Bike Ride with Older Boys, Laura Kasischke
2008: Let’s Move All Things (September), Denver Butson
2007: The Day Flies Off Without Me, John Stammers
2006: A Supermarket in California, Allen Ginsberg
2005: Tortures, Wislawa Szymborska
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Originality is being different from oneself, not others.
Philip Larkin, Letters to Monica
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