by Lazy Dyke » Tue Apr 18, 2006 6:07 pm
Larkin is brilliant! Morrissey was inspired by him, no less? My favourite poem by his is the prestiged High Windows.
High Windows
When 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Like an outdated combine harvester,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 air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.
Here's a few of my other favourite poems.. which I studied in english literature in school I do believe:
Havisham by Carol Anne Duffy
Beloved sweetheart bastard. Not a day since then
I haven't wished him dead. Prayed for it
so hard I've dark green pebbles for eyes,
ropes on the back of my hands I could strangle with.
Spinster. I stink and remember. Whole days
in bed cawing Nooooo at the wall; the dress
yellowing, trembling if I open the wardrobe;
the slewed mirror, full-length, her, myself, who did this
to me? Puce curses that are sounds not words.
Some nights better, the lost body over me,
my fluent tongue in its mouth in its ear
then down till suddenly bite awake. Love's
hate behind a white veil; a red balloon bursting
in my face. Bang. I stabbed at a wedding cake.
Give me a male corpse for a long slow honeymoon.
Don't think it's only the heart that b-b-b-breaks.
Havisham is a character from Great Expectations by Dickens. Never read it, heard she's captured the character pretty well though tbh. I can't concentrate on Dickens.. pretty difficult reading I find.
I am very bothered by Simon Armitage
I am very bothered when I think
of the bad things I have done in my life.
Not least that time in the chemistry lab
when I held a pair of scissors by the blades
and played the handles
in the naked lilac flame of the Bunsen burner;
then called your name, and handed them over.
O the unrivalled stench of branded skin
as you slipped your thumb and middle finger in,
then couldn't shake off the two burning rings. Marked,
the doctor said, for eternity.
Don't believe me, please, if I say
that was just my butterfingered way, at thirteen,
of asking you if you would marry me.
I didn't study this, but I studied Simon Armitage and I really liked his poetry and have since bought a book, this is in one of them and I like it.. because it has many different sides to it, including I think, quite a humorous one.
