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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.

-Philip Larkin

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Only One Ship Is

Philip Larkin

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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.

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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 Awakened Each Dawn Increasingly To Fear.

What Are Days For? Days Are Where We Live.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

I Have Wished You Something None Of The Others Would.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Get Stewed:books Are A Load Of Crap.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

I Didn't Choose Poetry: Poetry Chose Me.

But Superstition, Like Belief, Must Die.

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?

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.

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.

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

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

Death: The Anaesthetic From Which None Come Round.

Life Is First Boredom, Then Fear.

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

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 Breath That Sharpens Life Is Life Itself.

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.

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

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

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.

Most Things May Never Happen: This One Will.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Death Is No Different Whined At Than Withstood.

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.

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.

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Clearly Money Has Something To Do With Life.

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

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

Walk With The Dead For Fear Of Death.

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

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Here Is An Unfenced Existance

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.

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.

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

What Will Survive Of Us Is Love.

Inspirational Love

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.'

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

They Say Eyes Clear With Age.

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

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.

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

Here No Elsewhere Underwrites My Existence.

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?

Deprivation Is For Me What Daffodils Were For Wordsworth.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sex Is Designed For People Who Like Overcoming Obstacles.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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