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Heads In The Women's Ward On Pillow After Pillow Lies The Wild White Hair And Staring Eyes; Jaws Stand Open; Necks Are Stretched With Every Tendon Sharply Sketched; A Bearded Mouth Talks Silently To Someone No One Else Can See. Sixty Years Ago They Smiled At Lover, Husband, First-born Child. Smiles Are For Youth. For Old Age Come Death's Terror And Delirium.

-Philip Larkin

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Heads In The Women's

Philip Larkin

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Heads In The Women's Ward On Pillow After Pillow Lies The Wild White Hair And Staring Eyes; Jaws Stand Open; Necks Are Stretched With Every Tendon Sharply Sketched; A Bearded Mouth Talks Silently To Someone No One Else Can See. Sixty Years Ago They Smiled At Lover, Husband, First-born Child. Smiles Are For Youth. For Old Age Come Death's Terror And Delirium.

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I Wonder Love Can Have Already Set In Dreams, When We've Not Met More Times Than I Can Number On One Hand.

I Wouldn't Mind Seeing China If I Could Come Back The Same Day.

Home Is So Sad. It Stays As It Was Left, / Shaped To The Comfort Of The Last To Go / As If To Win Them Back

Poetry Should Begin With Emotion In The Poet, And End With The Same Emotion In The Reader. The Poem Is Simply The Instrument Of Transferance.

Give Me A Thrill, Says The Reader, Give Me A Kick; I Don't Care How You Succeed, Or What Subject You Pick.

I Can't Understand These Chaps Who Go Round American Universities Explaining How They Write Poems: It's Like Going Round Explaining How You Sleep With Your Wife.

It Becomes Still More Difficult To Find words At Once True And Kind, or Not Untrue And Not Unkind.

Things Are Tougher Than We Are, Just As Earth Will Always Respond However We Mess It About.

I Think A Young Poet, Or An Old Poet, For That Matter, Should Try To Produce Something That Pleases Himself Personally, Not Only When He's Written It But A Couple Of Weeks Later. Then He Should See If It Pleases Anyone Else, By Sending It To The Kind Of Magazine He Likes Reading.

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.

I Have Started To Say "a Quarter Of A Century" Or "thirty Years Back" About My Own Life.

Still, Vicious Or Virtuous, Love Suits Most Of Us.

A Writer Can Have Only One Language, If Language Is Going To Mean Anything To Him.

Life Has A Practice Of Living You, If You Don't Live It.

When I Get Sent Manuscripts From Aspiring Poets, I Do One Of Two Things: If There Is No Stamped Self-addressed Envelope, I Throw It Into The Bin.-if There Is, I Write And Tell Them To F**k Off.

Deprivation Is For Me What Daffodils Were For Wordsworth.

Most People Know More As They Get Older: I Give All That The Cold Shoulder.

I Never Think Of Poetry Or The Poetry Scene, Only Separate Poems Written By Individuals.

... Everyone Young Going Down The Long Slide To Happiness, Endlessly.

What Are Days For? Days Are Where We Live.

My Mother, Who Hates Thunderstorms, Holds Up Each Summer Day And Shakes It Out Suspiciously, Lest Swarms Of Grape-dark Clouds Are Lurking There.

A Good Meal Can Somewhat Repair / The Eatings Of Slight Love

Novels Seem To Me To Be Richer, Broader, Deeper, More Enjoyable Than Poems.

Any Memory For The Most Part Depending On Chance.

Joy Is For The Simple Or The Great To Feel, Neither Of Which We Are.

There Is Bad In All Good Authors: What A Pity The Converse Isn't True!

All The Unhurried Day / Your Mind Lay Open Like A Drawer Of Knives.

Life Is First Boredom, Then Fear. Whether Or Not We Use It, It Goes, And Leaves What Something Hidden From Us Chose, And Age, And Then The Only End Of Age.

So Many Things I Had Thought Forgotten Return To My Mind With Stranger Pain: Like Letters That Arrive Addressed To Someone Who Left The House So Many Years Ago.

What Will Survive Of Us Is Love.

Inspirational Love

Uncontradicting Solitude Supports Me On Its Giant Palm; And Like A Sea-anemone Or Simple Snail, There Cautiously Unfolds, Emerges, What I Am.

Many Famous Feet Have Trod Sublunary Paths, And Famous Hands Have Weighed The Strength They Have Against The Strength They Need; And Famous Lips Interrogated God Concerning Franchise In Eternity.

But Superstition, Like Belief, Must Die.

The Trees Are Coming Into Leaf Like Something Almost Being Said.

Slowly Light Strengthens, And The Room Takes Shape. It Stands Plain As A Wardrobe, What We Know, Have Always Known, Know That We Can't Escape, Yet Can't Accept. One Side Will Have To Go. Meanwhile Telephones Crouch, Getting Ready To Ring In Locked-up Offices, And All The Uncaring Intricate Rented World Begins To Rouse. The Sky Is White As Clay, With No Sun. Work Has To Be Done. Postmen Like Doctors Go From House To House.

How Little Our Careers Express What Lies In Us, And Yet How Much Time They Take Up. It's Sad, Really.

Never Such Innocence, Never Before Or Since, As Changed Itself To Past Without A Word--the Men Leaving The Gardens Tidy, The Thousands Of Marriages Lasting A Little While Longer: Never Such Innocence Again.

I Have Wished You Something None Of The Others Would.

Heads In The Women's Ward On Pillow After Pillow Lies The Wild White Hair And Staring Eyes; Jaws Stand Open; Necks Are Stretched With Every Tendon Sharply Sketched; A Bearded Mouth Talks Silently To Someone No One Else Can See. Sixty Years Ago They Smiled At Lover, Husband, First-born Child. Smiles Are For Youth. For Old Age Come Death's Terror And Delirium.

Death: The Anaesthetic From Which None Come Round.

To Write You Must Be Warm, Fed, Loved And Sober.

I'd Like To Think...that People In Pubs Would Talk About My Poems

Parting Is A Training Streamer,lingering Like Leaves In Autumn.

Boys Dream Of Native Girls Who Bring Breadfruit, Whatever They Are.

Above All, Though, Children Are Linked To Adults By The Simple Fact That They Are In Process Of Turning Into Them. For This They May Be Forgiven Much. Children Are Bound To Be Inferior To Adults, Or There Is No Incentive To Grow Up.

It Is Fatal To Decide, Intellectually, What Good Poetry Is Because You Are Then In Honour Bound To Try To Write It, Instead Of The Poems That Only You Can Write.

I Work All Day, And Get Half-drunk At Night.

Only One Ship Is Seeking Us, A Black-sailed Unfamiliar, Towing At Her Backa Huge And Birdless Silence. In Her Wakeno Waters Breed Or Break.

One Of The Quainter Quirks Of Life Is That We Shall Never Know Who Dies On The Dame Day As We Do Ourselves.

If You Tell A Novelist, 'life's Not Like That', He Has To Do Something About It. The Poet Simply Replies, 'no, But I Am.'

Now, Helpless In The Hollow Of An Unarmorial Age, A Trough Of Smoke In Slow Suspended Skeins Above Their Scrap Of History, Only An Attitude Remains: Time Has Transfigured Them Into Untruth. The Stone Finality They Hardly Meant Has Come To Be Their Final Blazon, And To Prove Our Almost-instinct Almost True: What Will Survive Of Us Is Love.

Death Is No Different Whined At Than Withstood.

What Are Days For? Days Are Where We Live. They Come, They Wake Us Time And Time Over. Theyare To Be Happy In: Where Can We Live But Days?

In Everyone There Sleeps A Sense Of Life Lived According To Love.

Life Is First Boredom, Then Fear.

I Like Spaghetti Because You Don't Have To Take Your Eyes Off The Book To Pick About Among It, It's All The Same.

I Don't Think I Write Well - Just Better Than Anyone Else.

Seriously, I Think It Is A Grave Fault In Life That So Much Time Is Wasted In Social Matters, Because It Not Only Takes Up Time When You Might Be Doing Individual Private Things, But It Prevents You Storing Up The Psychic Energy That Can Then Be Released To Create Art Or Whatever It Is. It's Terrible The Way We Scotch Silence & Solitude At Every Turn, Quite Suicidal. I Can't See How To Avoid It, Without Being Very Rich Or Very Unpopular, & It Does Worry Me, For Time Is Slipping By , And Nothing Is Done. It Isn't As If Anything Was Gained By This Social Frivolity, It Isn't: It's Just A Waste.

If We Seriously Contemplate Life It Appears An Agony Too Great To Be Supported, But For The Most Part Our Minds Gloss Such Things Over & Until The Ice Finally Lets Us Through We Skate About Merrily Enough. Most People, I'm Convinced, Don't Think About Life At All. They Grab What They Think They Want And The Subsequent Consequences Keep Them Busy In An Endless Chain Till They're Carried Out Feet First.

Get Stewed:books Are A Load Of Crap.

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.

The Way The Moon Dashes Through Clouds That Blow Loosely As Cannon-smoke... Is A Reminder Of The Strength And Pain Of Being Young; That It Can't Come Again, But Is For Others Undiminished Somewhere.

But O, Photography! As No Art Is, Faithful And Disappointing!

Since The Majority Of Me Rejects The Majority Of You, Debating Ends Forthwith, And We Divide.'' Philip Larkin

I Am Not Sure, Once A Poet Has Found Out What Has Been Written Already, And How It Was Written - Once, In Short, He Has Learnt His Trade - That He Should Bother With Literature At All. Poetry Is Not Like Surgery, A Technique That Can Be Copied. Every Operation The Poet Performs Is Unique, And Need Never Be Done Again.

But, O, Photography! As No Art Is,faithful And Disappointing! That Recordsdull Days As Dull, And Hold-it Smiles As Frauds,and Will Not Censor Blemishes,like Washing-lines, And Hall's-distemper Boards

Why Should I Let The Toad Work Squat On My Life? Can't I Use My Wit As A Pitchfork And Drive The Brute Off? Six Days Of The Week It Soils With Its Sickening Poison-- Just For Paying A Few Bills! That's Out Of Proportion.

My Age Fallen Away Like White Swaddling Floats In The Middle Distance, Becomes An Inhabited Cloud.

In Everyone There Sleeps. A Sense Of Life Lived According To Love. To Some It Means The Difference They Could Make. By Loving Others, But Across Most It Sweeps. As All They Might Have Done Had They Been Loved. That Nothing Cures.

Here No Elsewhere Underwrites My Existence.

The Trees Are Coming Into Leaf Like Something Almost Being Said; The Recent Buds Relax And Spread, Their Greenness Is A Kind Of Grief. Is It That They Are Born Again And We Grow Old? No, They Die Too. Their Yearly Trick Of Looking New Is Written Down In Rings Of Grain. Yet Still The Unresting Castles Thresh In Fullgrown Thickness Every May. Last Year Is Dead, They Seem To Say, Begin Afresh, Afresh, Afresh.

Spring, Of All Seasons Most Gratuitous, Is Fold Of Untaught Flower, Is Race Of Water, Is Earth's Most Multiple, Excited Daughter; And Those She Has Least Use For See Her Best, Their Paths Grown Craven And Circuitous, Their Visions Mountain-clear, Their Needs Immodest.

To Put One Brick Upon Another, Add A Third, And Then A Fourth, Leaves No Time To Wonder Whether What You Do Has Any Worth.

And The Case Of Butterflies So Rich It Looks As If All Summer Settled There And Died.

Life And Literature Is A Question Of What One Thrills To, And Further Than That No Man Shall Ever Go Without Putting His Foot In A Turd.

The Only Way To Eliminate Unemployment Is To Eliminate Unemployment Benefits.

The Chromatic Scale Is What You Use To Give The Effect Of Drinking A Quinine Martini And Having An Enema Simultaneously.

Saki Says That Youth Is Like Hors D'oeuvres: You Are So Busy Thinking Of The Next Courses You Don't Notice It. When You've Had Them, You Wish You'd Had More Hors D'oeuvres.

I Am Awakened Each Dawn Increasingly To Fear.

Here Is An Unfenced Existance

It's Easy To Write When You've Nothing To Write About (that Is, When You Are Young).

Living In England Has No Such Excuse: These Are My Customs And Establishments.

Beneath It All, Desire Of Oblivion Runs: Despite The Artful Tensions Of The Calendar, The Life Insurance, The Tabled Fertility Rites, The Costly Aversion Of The Eyes From Death- Beneath It All, Desire Of Oblivion Runs.

Clearly Money Has Something To Do With Life.

Most Things May Never Happen: This One Will.

A Writer Once Said To Me, If You Ever Go To America, Go Either To The East Coast Or The West Coast: The Rest Is A Desert Full Of Bigots. That's What I Think I'd Like . . . A Version Of Pastoral.

I Am Beginning To Think Of The Human Imagination As A Fruit Machine On Which Victories Are Rare And Separated By Much Vain Expense, And Represent A Rare Alignment Of Mental And Spiritual Qualities That Normally Are Quite At Odds.

No One Can Tear Your Thread Out Of Himself. No One Can Tie You Down Or Set You Free.

They Say Eyes Clear With Age.

Sex Is Designed For People Who Like Overcoming Obstacles.

As A Guiding Principle I Believe That Every Poem Must Be Its Own Sole Freshly Created Universe, And Therefore Have No Belief N 'tradition' Or A Common Myth-kitty Or Casual Allusions In Poems To Other Poems Or Poets, Which Last I Find Unpleasantly Like The Talk Of Literary Understrappers Letting You See They Know The Right People.

Guiding Principles

To Start At A New Place Is Always To Feel Incompetent & Unwanted.

One Of The Sadder Things, I Think, Is How Our Birthdays Slowly Sink: Presents And Parties Disappear, The Cards Grow Fewer Year By Year, Till, When One Reaches Sixty-five, How Many Care We're Still Alive?

Everyone Should Be Forcibly Transplanted To Another Continent From Their Family At The Age Of Three.

On Me Your Voice Falls As They Say Love Should, Like An Enormous Yes.

The Difficult Part Of Love Is Being Selfish Enough.

You Can't Put Off Being Young Until You Retire.

In Times When Nothing Stood But Worsened, Or Grew Strange, There Was One Constant Good: She Did Not Change.

Dear, I Can't Write, It's All A Fantasy: A Kind Of Circling Obsession.

I Am Always Trying To 'preserve' Things By Getting Other People To Read What I Have Written, And Feel What I Felt.

I Think We Got Much Better Poetry When It Was All Regarded As Sinful Or Subversive, And You Had To Hide It Under The Cushion When Somebody Came In.

The Breath That Sharpens Life Is Life Itself.

Courage Is No Good: It Means Not Scaring Others. Being Brave Lets No One Off The Grave. Death Is No Different Whined At Than Withstood.

The Poetic Impulse Is Distinct From Ideas About Things Or Feelings About Things, Though It May Use These. It's More Like A Desire To Separate A Piece Of One's Experience & Set It Up On Its Own, An Isolated Object Never To Trouble You Again, At Least Not For A Bit. In The Absence Of This Impulse Nothing Stirs.

Walk With The Dead For Fear Of Death.

Here Silence Stands Like Heat. Here Leaves Unnoticed Thicken, Hidden Weeds Flower, Neglected Waters Quicken, Luminously-peopled Air Ascends; And Past The Poppies Bluish Neutral Distance Ends The Land Suddenly Beyond A Beach Of Shapes And Shingle. Here Is Unfenced Existence: Facing The Sun, Untalkative, Out Of Reach.

One Of The Great Criticisms Of Poets Of The Past Is That They Said One Thing And Did Another.

I Think That At The Bottom Of All Art Lies The Impulse To Preserve.

I Think Writing About Unhappiness Is Probably The Source Of My Popularity, If I Have Any - After All, Most People Are Unhappy, Don't You Think?

Sex Means Nothing--just The Moment Of Ecstasy, That Flares And Dies In Minutes.

Only In Books The Flat And Final Happens, Only In Dreams We Meet And Interlock.

I Didn't Choose Poetry: Poetry Chose Me.

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