Dockery and Son

 

Alberto Guglielmi

 ‘Dockery was junior to you,

Wasn’t he?’ said the Dean. ‘His son’s here now.’   

Death-suited, visitant, I nod. ‘And do

You keep in touch with—’ Or remember how   

Black-gowned, unbreakfasted, and still half-tight   

We used to stand before that desk, to give   

‘Our version’ of ‘these incidents last night’?   

I try the door of where I used to live:

Locked. The lawn spreads dazzlingly wide.

A known bell chimes. I catch my train, ignored.   

Canal and clouds and colleges subside

Slowly from view. But Dockery, good Lord,   

Anyone up today must have been born

In ’43, when I was twenty-one.

If he was younger, did he get this son

At nineteen, twenty? Was he that withdrawn

High-collared public-schoolboy, sharing rooms

With Cartwright who was killed? Well, it just shows   

How much ... How little ... Yawning, I suppose

I fell asleep, waking at the fumes

And furnace-glares of Sheffield, where I changed,   

And ate an awful pie, and walked along   

The platform to its end to see the ranged   

Joining and parting lines reflect a strong

Unhindered moon. To have no son, no wife,   

No house or land still seemed quite natural.   

Only a numbness registered the shock   

Of finding out how much had gone of life,   

How widely from the others. Dockery, now:   

Only nineteen, he must have taken stock

Of what he wanted, and been capable

Of ... No, that’s not the difference: rather, how

Convinced he was he should be added to!

Why did he think adding meant increase?

To me it was dilution. Where do these

Innate assumptions come from? Not from what   

We think truest, or most want to do:

Those warp tight-shut, like doors. They’re more a style   

Our lives bring with them: habit for a while,

Suddenly they harden into all we’ve got

And how we got it; looked back on, they rear   

Like sand-clouds, thick and close, embodying   

For Dockery a son, for me nothing,

Nothing with all a son’s harsh patronage.   

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.

Philip Larkin

This Be The Verse

 

StockCake

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.   

    They may not mean to, but they do.   

They fill you with the faults they had

    And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn

    By fools in old-style hats and coats,   

Who half the time were soppy-stern

    And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.

    It deepens like a coastal shelf.

Get out as early as you can,

    And don’t have any kids yourself.

Philip Larkin

MCMXIV

 

Dimitrios Koskinas

Those long uneven lines

Standing as patiently

As if they were stretched outside

The Oval or Villa Park,

The crowns of hats, the sun

On moustached archaic faces

Grinning as if it were all

An August Bank Holiday lark;

And the shut shops, the bleached

Established names on the sunblinds,

The farthings and sovereigns,

And dark-clothed children at play

Called after kings and queens,

The tin advertisements

For cocoa and twist, and the pubs

Wide open all day;

And the countryside not caring:

The place-names all hazed over

With flowering grasses, and fields

Shadowing Domesday lines

Under wheat’s restless silence;

The differently-dressed servants

With tiny rooms in huge houses,

The dust behind limousines;

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.

Phillip Larkin

Skin

 

Lefiefri

Obedient daily dress,

You cannot always keep

That unfakable young surface.

You must learn your lines —

Anger, amusement, sleep;

Those few forbidding signs

Of the continuous coarse

Sand—laden wind, time;

You must thicken, work loose

Into an old bag

Carrying a soiled name.

Parch then; be roughened; sag;

And pardon me, that

I Could find, when you were new,

No brash festivity

To wear you at, such as

Clothes are entitled to

Till the fashion changes.

Philip Larkin