High Windows (4 page)
Authors: Philip Larkin
Q
uarterly, is it, money reproaches me:‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?
I am all you never had of goods and sex.
You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’
So I look at others, what they do with theirs:
They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.
By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:
Clearly money has something to do with life
—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:
You can’t put off being young until you retire,
And however you bank your screw, the money you save
Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.
I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down
From long french windows at a provincial town,
The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad
In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.
C
ut grass lies frail:Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death
It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,
White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne’s lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer’s pace.
O
n the day of the explosionShadows pointed towards the pithead:
In the sun the slagheap slept.
Down the lane came men in pitboots
Coughing oath-edged talk and pipe-smoke,
Shouldering off the freshened silence.
One chased after rabbits; lost them;
Came back with a nest of lark’s eggs;
Showed them; lodged them in the grasses.
So they passed in beards and moleskins,
Fathers, brothers, nicknames, laughter,
Through the tall gates standing open.
At noon, there came a tremor; cows
Stopped chewing for a second; sun,
Scarfed as in a heat-haze, dimmed.
The
dead
go
on
before
us,
theyAre
sitting
in
God’s
house
in
comfort,We
shall
see
them
face
to
face
—
Plain as lettering in the chapels
It was said, and for a second
Wives saw men of the explosion
Larger than in life they managed—
Gold as on a coin, or walking
Somehow from the sun towards them,
One showing the eggs unbroken.
Philip Larkin was born in Coventry in 1922 and was educated at King Henry VIII School, Coventry, and St John’s College, Oxford. As well as his volumes of poems, which include
The Whitsun Weddings
and
High Windows,
he wrote two novels,
Jill
and
A Girl in Winter,
and two books of collected journalism:
All What Jazz: A Record Library,
and
Required Writing: Miscellaneous Prose.
He worked as a librarian at the University of Hull from 1955 until his death in 1985. He was the best-loved poet of his generation, and the recipient of innumerable honours, including the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry, and the WH Smith Award.
poetry
THE NORTH SHIP
XX POEMS
THE FANTASY POETS NO. 21
THE LESS DECEIVED
(The Marvell Press)
THE WHITSUN WEDDINGS
HIGH WINDOWS
COLLECTED POEMS
(Edited by Anthony Thwaite)
THE OXFORD BOOK OF TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH VERSE
(ed.)
fiction
JILL
A GIRL IN WINTER
TROUBLE AT WILLOW GARLES
(edited by James Booth)
non-fiction
ALL WHAT JAZZ: A RECORD DIARY
1961–71
REQUIRED WRITING: MISCELLANEOUS PIECES
1955–82
SELECTED LETTERS OF PHILIP LARKIN
1940–85
(edited by Anthony Thwaite)
FURTHER REQUIREMENTS:
INTERVIEWS, BROADCASTS, STATEMENTS AND REVIEWS
1952–85
(edited by Anthony Thwaite)
First published in 1974
by Faber and Faber Ltd
Bloomsbury House
74–77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA
This ebook edition first published in 2012All rights reserved
© The Estate of Philip Larkin, 1974The right of Philip Larkin to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–0–571–26324–0