Free High Windows by Philip Larkin

Livings
     
     
    I
     
    I deal with farmers, things like dips and feed.
    Every third month I book myself in at
    The ------ Hotel in ----ton for three days.
    The boots carries my lean old leather case
    Up to a single, where I hang my hat.
    One beer, and then ‘the dinner’, at which I read
    The --- shire Times from soup to stewed pears.
    Births, deaths. For sale. Police court. Motor spares.
     
    Afterwards, whisky in the Smoke Room: Clough,
    Margetts, the Captain, Dr. Watterson;
    Who makes ends meet, who’s taking the knock,
    Government tariffs, wages, price of stock.
    Smoke hangs under the light. The pictures on
    The walls are comic—hunting, the trenches, stuff
    Nobody minds or notices. A sound
    Of dominoes from the Bar. I stand a round.
     
    Later, the square is empty: a big sky
    Drains down the estuary like the bed
    Of a gold river, and the Customs House
    Still has its office lit. I drowse
    Between ex-Army sheets, wondering why
    I think it’s worth while coming. Father’s dead:
    He used to, but the business now is mine.
    It’s time for change, in nineteen twenty-nine.
     

II
     
    Seventy feet down
    The sea explodes upwards,
    Relapsing, to slaver
    Off landing-stage steps—
    Running suds, rejoice!
     
    Rocks writhe back to sight.
    Mussels, limpets,
    Husband their tenacity
    In the freezing slither—
    Creatures, I cherish you!
     
    By day, sky builds
    Grape-dark over the salt
    Unsown stirring fields.
    Radio rubs its legs,
    Telling me of elsewhere:
     
    Barometers falling,
    Ports wind-shuttered,
    Fleets pent like hounds,
    Fires in humped inns
    Kippering sea-pictures—
     
    Keep it all off!
    By night, snow swerves
    (O loose moth world)
    Through the stare travelling
    Leather-black waters.
     

    Guarded by brilliance
    I set plate and spoon,
    And after, divining-cards.
    Lit shelved liners
    Grope like mad worlds westward.
     
III
     
    Tonight we dine without the Master
    (Nocturnal vapours do not please);
    The port goes round so much the faster,
    Topics are raised with no less ease—
    Which advowson looks the fairest,
    What the wood from Snape will fetch,
    Names for pudendum mulieris ,
    Why is Judas like Jack Ketch?
     
    The candleflames grow thin, then broaden:
    Our butler Starveling piles the logs
    And sets behind the screen a Jordan
    (Quicker than going to the bogs).
    The wine heats temper and complexion:
    Oath-enforced assertions fly
    On rheumy fevers, resurrection,
    Regicide and rabbit pie.
     
    The fields around are cold and muddy,
    The cobbled streets close by are still,
    A sizar shivers at his study,
    The kitchen cat has made a kill;
    The bells discuss the hour’s gradations,
    Dusty shelves hold prayers and proofs:
    Above, Chaldean constellations
    Sparkle over crowded roofs.
     

Forget What Did
     
     
    S topping the diary
    Was a stun to memory,
    Was a blank starting,
     
    One no longer cicatrized
    By such words, such actions
    As bleakened waking.
     
    I wanted them over,
    Hurried to burial
    And looked back on
     
    Like the wars and winters
    Missing behind the windows
    Of an opaque childhood.
     
    And the empty pages?
    Should they ever be filled
    Let it be with observed
     
    Celestial recurrences,
    The day the flowers come,
    And when the birds go.
     

High Windows
     
     
    W hen I see a couple of kids
    And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
    Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm,
    I know this is paradise
     
    Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives—
    Bonds and gestures pushed to one side
    Like an outdated combine harvester,
    And everyone young going down the long slide
     
    To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if
    Anyone looked at me, forty years back,
    And thought, That’ll be the life ;
    No God any more, or sweating in the dark
     
    About hell and that, or having to hide
    What you think of the priest. He
    And his lot will all go down the long slide
    Like free bloody birds. And immediately
     
    Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
    The sun-comprehending glass,
    And beyond it, the deep blue