This poem explores the deterioration of a relationship through uncomfortable silence and a lack of honest communication between the couple. As more time passes silently in bed, the darkness and clouds outside seem to reflect their declining relationship. They no longer know each other or why they do not get along as they used to. The truth of their situation is coming to an end as their relationship has become miserable and is inevitably over.

1. Talking In Bed
It clearly isn’t.
Either literally lying down
or lying to one another.
Talking in bed ought to be easiest,
Lying together there goes back so far,
An emblem of two people being honest.
Paradox.
Pathetic valency
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky,
More darkness ahead.
What their relationship
has turned into.
As more time is
passing the silence
is getting intense,
but every time they
think of something
to say the clouds
disperse again.
They
don’t
know why
they don’t
talk or get
along like
they used
to.
And dark towns heap up on the horizon.
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation
It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,
Or not untrue and not unkind.
Paradox
Miserable
relationship that is
inevitably over.
Awkward,
uncomfortable
silence.
The truth is coming.
No future for their relationship.

2. Reality is kicking in.
As if the marriages aren't beautiful any more.
Unemployed – bored.
Getting away from
them, or don't want
their children cooped
up indoors like
themselves.
Constantly looked at or not
looked after properly –
working class.
Higher class, not every family
had a television in those days.
The imminent future.
Traditional dating place.
Starting to grow up and see
the beauty in falling in love.
The children are turning into their parents.
Afternoons
Summer is fading:
The leaves fall in ones and twos
From trees bordering
The new recreation ground.
In the hollows of afternoons
Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children.
Coming to an end – getting depressing.
As if they have been preparing
for it their whole lives.
Market workers, carpenters etc.
Behind them, at intervals,
Stand husbands in skilled trades,
An estateful of washing,
And the albums, lettered
Our Wedding, lying
Near the television:
Before them, the wind
Is ruining their courting-places
That are still courting-places
(But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acorns,
Expect to be taken home.
Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.
They're getting too old for courting.
The new generation
- it's their turn now.
This poem is optimistic because
Larkin is suggesting that
there is hope in finding love.

3. Avoiding rich
people; he doesn't
like them.
Here
Tough and mean
people or pure,
innocent people.
Working class.
Insulting the working class.
Swerving east, from rich industrial shadows
And traffic all night north; swerving through fields
Too thin and thistled to be called meadows,
And now and then a harsh-named halt, that shields
Workmen at dawn; swerving to solitude
Of skies and scarecrows, haystacks, hares and pheasants,
And the widening river's slow presence,
The piled gold clouds, the shining gull-marked mud,
Gathers to the surprise of a large town:
Here domes and statues, spires and cranes cluster
Beside grain-scattered streets, barge-crowded water,
And residents from raw estates, brought down
The dead straight miles by stealing flat-faced trolleys,
Push through plate-glass swing doors to their desires Cheap suits, red kitchen-ware, sharp shoes, iced lollies,
Electric mixers, toasters, washers, driers A cut-price crowd, urban yet simple, dwelling
Where only salesmen and relations come
Within a terminate and fishy-smelling
Pastoral of ships up streets, the slave museum,
Tattoo-shops, consulates, grim head-scarved wives;
And out beyond its mortgaged half-built edges
Fast-shadowed wheat fields, running high as hedges,
Isolate villages, where removed lives
Pessimistic
Loneliness clarifies. 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:
He will never be free.
Facing the sun, untalkative, out of reach.
Referring to the residents.
Saying how in other places they
are not seen as anything
important, and in being here
they can be themselves and
how they truly are.
Feels smothered and belittled.
The poem begins
optimistic
and then turns suddenly
pessimistic.
Paradox
Unbearable, something
uncomfortable and cannot
be avoided.
As if unexpected.
He is no limitation to be who he
wants to be. Freedom.

4. As if he thinks it a possibility.
Something built from nothing.
Water
If I were called in
To construct a religion
I should make use of water.
As if someone creates them.
Pessimistic *Man-made
Prayer
service.
Going to church
Would entail a fording
To dry, different clothes;
My liturgy would employ
Images of sousing,
A furious devout drench,
Is he perhaps making
fun of the people who
actually do this?
As if it is a chore – one
he doesn't want to do.
Soaked.
Alliteration.
Sarcastic.
Purity.
The presence of God
looking down through
the clouds.
And I should raise in the east
A glass of water
Where any-angled light
Would congregate endlessly.
Positive.
The light would never fade.

5. Perhaps Larkin is saying that if we
weren't so ignorant, then
we would have answers.
Choosing what not to know.
Ignorance
As if uncertain of what he wants to say.
As if viewing life if he
would be in their shoes.
Strange to know nothing, never to be sure Repetition of the word “or”
which makes it sound as
Not allowed to ask otherwise.
Of what is true or right or real, .
though he is thinking on
the spot and is
But forced to qualify or so I feel,
passionate about the
subject.
Perhaps they are all keeping all
Or well, it does seem so:
the answers to themselves.
Someone must know.
Generations.
He is speaking as if he
has all the answers and
thinks everyone is
ignorant for not knowing
them as well.
Death is certain and starts
when we don't know, or
want it to – ignorance.
Strange to be ignorant of the way things work:
Their skill at finding what they need,
Their sense of shape, and punctual spread of
seed,
Being controlled
by ourselves.
And willingness to change;
Yes, it is strange,
Even to wear such knowledge – for our flesh
Surrounds us with its own decisions Paradox – we
And yet spend all our life on imprecisions,
don't know what
life is about.
That when we start to die
Have no idea why. What we do know is mere gossip.

6. A very pessimistic poem.
Endlessly.
As if forced –
no enthusiasm.
Perhaps they don't want
anyone else knowing the
answer.
Days
Two voices, one asking the other answering.
What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are to be happy in:
Where can we live but days?
Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.
Larkin is asking and
life and fact are
answering.
Personification.
Lack of hope.
Most important
people in the
situation.
As if excited to know the answer.