Church Going
Once I am sure there's
nothing going on
I step inside, letting
the door thud shut.
Another church: matting,
seats, and stone,
And little books;
sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now;
some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the
small neat organ;
And a tense, musty,
unignorably silence,
Brewed God knows how
long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward
reverence,
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the
roof looks almost new––
Cleaned or restored?
Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I
peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale
verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more
loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger
briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate
an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not
worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a
loss like this,
Wondering what to look
for; wondering, too,
When churches fall
completely out of use
What we shall turn them
into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals
chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate,
and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest
rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as
unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children
touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a
cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking
a dead one?
Power of some sort or
other will go on
In games, in riddles,
seemingly at random;
But superstition, like
belief, must die,
And what remains when
disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement,
brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognizable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I
wonder who
Will be the last, the
very last, to seek
This place for what it
was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know
what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy
for antique,
Or Christmas-addict,
counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and
organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my
representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to
this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because
it held unspilt
So long and equably what
since is found
Only in separation -
marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts
of these - for which was built
This special shell? For,
though I've no idea
What this accoutred
frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in
silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blunt air all
our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed
as destinies.
And that much never can
be obsolete,
Since someone will
forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be
more serious,
And gravitating with it
to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was
proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead
lie round.
An Arundel Tomb
Side by side, their
faces blurred,
The earl and countess
lie in stone,
Their proper habits
vaguely shown
As jointed armour,
stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint
of the absurd—
The little dogs under
their feet.
Such plainness of the
pre-baroque
Hardly involves the
eye, until
It meets his
left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the
other; and
One sees, with a
sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn,
holding her hand.
They would not think
to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in
effigy
Was just a detail
friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet
commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping
to prolong
The Latin names
around the base.
They would not guess
how early in
Their supine
stationary voyage
The air would change
to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry
away;
How soon succeeding
eyes begin
To look, not read.
Rigidly they
Persisted, linked,
through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell,
undated. Light
Each summer thronged
the glass. A bright
Litter of bird calls
strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground.
And up the paths
The endless altered
people came,
Washing at their
identity.
Now, helpless in the
hollow of
An unarmorial age, a
trough
Of smoke in slow
suspended skeins
Above their scrap of
history,
Only an attitude
remains:
Time has transfigured
them into
Untruth. The stone
fidelity
They hardly meant has
come to be
Their final blazon,
and to prove
Our almost-instinct
almost true:
What will survive of
us is love.
Phillip Larkin published several books of poetry, including The North Ship, Fortune Press,
1946, 1966; XX Poems, Belfast, 1951; Poems, Fantasy Press, 1954; The
Less Deceived, Marvell Press, 1955, 1958; The Whitsun Weddings,
Random House, 1964; Corgi Modern Poets in
Focus 5, 1971; High Windows, Farrar, Straus, 1974; Femmes Damnées, 1978; Aubade, 1980; posthumously Collected Poems, Marvell Press,
1988, 1989; Collected Poems, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2004.
His
poems have been published in various periodicals such as American Scholar, Atlantic, Iowa Review, New York Times, New Yorker, Nation,
Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Prairie
Schooner and many others. He was the author of two novels; he was also an essayist,
jazz critic, and editor.
Phillip Larkin (August 9, 1922 - December 2, 1985)
Phillip Larkin (August 9, 1922 - December 2, 1985)
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