The Anaesthetic From Which None Come Round

If you read Stefan Beck's entry to the New Criterion's blog the other day titled "Don't fear the reaper" (This is sad that I have to give instructions because I don't know how to link, does this hurt BPB's credibility?) you would have come across part of the Phillip Larkin poem below.

Is life meaningless without death? Beck doesn’t think so, and to a certain extent of course he’s right. Is life less meaningless without death might be the better question. Then Beck slaps us in the face with the reality of the discussion.

“…“Unresting death, a whole day nearer now”: A friend of mine joked recently that they should slap that line on birthday cards. But where jokes are little help, arguments are none at all.”

So I’ll just shut up and admire how Larkin can put his thoughts down in sums of words to make sense in perfect rhythm and form to be beautiful like flower…Damn it!

Aubade

I work all day, and get half drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain edges will grow light.

Till then I see what's really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

– The good not used, the love not given, time

Torn off unused – nor wretchedly because

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never:

But at the total emptiness forever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says no rational being

Can fear a thing it cannot feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear – no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no-one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, know that we can't escape

Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

PHILIP LARKIN (1985)