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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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Philip Larkin
Age: 63 †
Born: 1922
Born: August 9
Died: 1985
Died: December 2
Critic
Journalist
Librarian
Music Critic
Music Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Coventry
England
UK
Philip Arthur Larkin
Black
Waters
Ship
Ships
Seeking
Silence
Huge
Sailed
Break
Breed
Water
Unfamiliar

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My age fallen away like white swaddling Floats in the middle distance, becomes An inhabited cloud.
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I have wished you something None of the others would.
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We should be careful / Of each other, we should be kind / While there is still time.
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The only way to eliminate unemployment is to eliminate unemployment benefits.
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You can look out of your life like a train & see what you're heading for, but you can't stop the train.
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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.
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Saki says that youth is like hors d'oeuvres: you are so busy thinking of the next courses you don't notice it. When you've had them, you wish you'd had more hors d'oeuvres.
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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.
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I never think of poetry or the poetry scene, only separate poems written by individuals.
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To write you must be warm, fed, loved and sober.
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Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder.
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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
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What are days for? Days are where we live.
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I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
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On me your voice falls as they say love should, Like an enormous yes.
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And the case of butterflies so rich it looks As if all summer settled there and died.
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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.
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One of the quainter quirks of life is that we shall never know who dies on the dame day as we do ourselves.
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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
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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.
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