Wants

Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff -
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone.

Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs:
Despite the artful tensions of the calendar,
The life insurance, the table of fertility rites,
The costly aversion of the eyes from death -
Beneath it all, desire of oblivion runs.

Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived, Faber & Faber, 1955.

Deceptions

'Of course I was drugged, and so heavily I did not regain consciousness until the next morning. I was horrified to discover that I had been ruined, and for some days I was inconsolable, and cried like a child to be killed or sent back to my aunt.'

-Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor

Even so distant, I can taste the grief,
Bitter and sharp with stalks, he made you gulp.
The sun's occasional print, the brisk brief
Worry of wheels along the street outside
Where bridal London bows the other way,
And light, unanswerable and tall and wide,
Forbids the scar to heal, and drives
Shame out of hiding. All the unhurried day,
Your mind lay open like a drawer of knives.

Slums, years, have buried you. I would not dare
Console you if I could. What can be said,
Except that suffering is exact, but where
Desire takes charge, readings will grow erratic?
For you would hardly care
That you were less deceived, out on that bed,
Than he was, stumbling up the breathless stair
To burst into fulfillment's desolate attic.

Philip Larkin, The Less Deceived, Faber & Faber, 1955 (1st edn.).

A delicadeza disto knocks me out everytime

Then as he was absently fingering the edges of an uncut page with a transient sense of frustation, his glance wandered along the aisle where he was standing and he received a shock that could not have been greater if a brick had been thrown through the plate-glass shop-window.

He saw Jill.

She stepped out from behind an alcove, working her way slowly along the shelves, moving eventually in his direction. There was nothing casual in the resemblance: it was so exact that for a second his mind could not remember who it was, this overfamiliar face. And he was too bewildered to think as the realization came upon him. 

It was her hair, the colour of dark viscous honey, her serious face, her wild high cheekbones. Little hollows appeared and reappeared under these because, as John saw when he approached, she was whistling very softly. Her winter coat hung open and woollen gloves were stuffed into the pockets. Instead of stockings, she wore little socks, and her hands, now that she had taken a book down and was turning the pages  - were small, bony and not well-cared for. As John drew near to her, she glanced up at him and backed a few paces absently to allow him to pass.

An interval elapsed, during which time John, making no effort to pass, stood staring at her. It was absurd, laughable, unbelievable. Then for a second time she looked up and met his wide eyes with her grey, utterly strange ones. Both of them, both so young-looking, stared one another. 

Philip Larkin, Jill, Faber & Faber, 1964 (1ª edição).

XVIII

If grief could burn out
Like a sunken coal,
The heart would rest quiet,
The unrent soul
Be still as a veil;
But I have watched all night

The fire grow silent,
The grey ash soft:
And I stir the stubborn flint
The flames have left,
And grief stirs, and the deft
Heart lies impotent.

Philip Larkin, The North Ship, Faber & Faber, 1966.

XXVI

This is the first thing
I have understood:
Time is the echo of an axe
Within a wood.

Philip Larkin, The North Ship, Faber & Faber, 1966.