Free High Windows by Philip Larkin Page B

houses, more parking allowed,
    More caravan sites, more pay.
    On the Business Page, a score
     
    Of spectacled grins approve
    Some takeover bid that entails
    Five per cent profit (and ten

    Per cent more in the estuaries): move
    Your works to the unspoilt dales
    (Grey area grants)! And when
     
    You try to get near the sea
    In summer …
                       It seems, just now,
    To be happening so very fast;
    Despite all the land left free
    For the first time I feel somehow
    That it isn’t going to last,
     
    That before I snuff it, the whole
    Boiling will be bricked in
    Except for the tourist parts—
    First slum of Europe: a role
    It won’t be so hard to win,
    With a cast of crooks and tarts.
     
    And that will be England gone,
    The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
    The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
    There’ll be books; it will linger on
    In galleries; but all that remains
    For us will be concrete and tyres.
     
    Most things are never meant.
    This won’t be, most likely: but greeds
    And garbage are too thick-strewn
    To be swept up now, or invent
    Excuses that make them all needs.
    I just think it will happen, soon.
     

The Card-Players
     
     
    J an van Hogspeuw staggers to the door
    And pisses at the dark. Outside, the rain
    Courses in cart-ruts down the deep mud lane.
    Inside, Dirk Dogstoerd pours himself some more,
    And holds a cinder to his clay with tongs,
    Belching out smoke. Old Prijck snores with the gale,
    His skull face firelit; someone behind drinks ale,
    And opens mussels, and croaks scraps of songs
    Towards the ham-hung rafters about love.
    Dirk deals the cards. Wet century-wide trees
    Clash in surrounding starlessness above
    This lamplit cave, where Jan turns back and farts,
    Gobs at the grate, and hits the queen of hearts.
     
    Rain, wind and fire! The secret, bestial peace!
     

The Building
     
     
    H igher than the handsomest hotel
    The lucent comb shows up for miles, but see,
    All round it close-ribbed streets rise and fall
    Like a great sigh out of the last century.
    The porters are scruffy; what keep drawing up
    At the entrance are not taxis; and in the hall
    As well as creepers hangs a frightening smell.
     
    There are paperbacks, and tea at so much a cup,
    Like an airport lounge, but those who tamely sit
    On rows of steel chairs turning the ripped mags
    Haven’t come far. More like a local bus,
    These outdoor clothes and half-filled shopping bags
    And faces restless and resigned, although
    Every few minutes comes a kind of nurse
     
    To fetch someone away: the rest refit
    Cups back to saucers, cough, or glance below
    Seats for dropped gloves or cards. Humans, caught
    On ground curiously neutral, homes and names
    Suddenly in abeyance; some are young,
    Some old, but most at that vague age that claims
    The end of choice, the last of hope; and all
     
    Here to confess that something has gone wrong.
    It must be error of a serious sort,
    For see how many floors it needs, how tall
    It’s grown by now, and how much money goes
    In trying to correct it. See the time,
    Half-past eleven on a working day,
    And these picked out of it; see, as they climb 
     

    To their appointed levels, how their eyes
    Go to each other, guessing; on the way
    Someone’s wheeled past, in washed-to-rags ward clothes:
    They see him, too. They’re quiet. To realise
    This new thing held in common makes them quiet,
    For past these doors are rooms, and rooms past those,
    And more rooms yet, each one further off
     
    And harder to return from; and who knows
    Which he will see, and when? For the moment, wait,
    Look down at the yard. Outside seems old enough:
    Red brick, lagged pipes, and someone walking by it
    Out to the car park, free. Then, past the gate,
    Traffic; a locked church; short terraced streets
    Where kids chalk games, and girls with hair-dos fetch
     
    Their separates from the cleaners—O world,
    Your loves, your chances, are beyond the stretch
    Of any hand from here! And so, unreal,
    A touching dream