Home ⇒ 📌Philip Larkin ⇒ Talking In Bed
Talking In Bed
Talking in bed ought to be easiest
Lying together there goes back so far
An emblem of two people being honest.
Yet more and more time passes silently.
Outside the wind’s incomplete unrest
Builds and disperses clouds about the sky.
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.
(2 votes, average: 3.00 out of 5)
Related poetry:
- Talking XX And then a scholar said, “Speak of Talking.” And he answered, saying: You talk when you cease to be at peace with your thoughts; And when you can no longer dwell in the solitude of your heart you live in your lips, and sound is a diversion and a pastime. And in much of your […]...
- The Artist All day with brow of anxious thought The dictionary through, Amid a million words he sought The sole one that would do. He wandered on from pub to pub Yet never ceased to seek With burning brain and pencil stub The Word Unique. Said he: ‘I’ll nail it down or die. Oh Heaven help me, […]...
- The Talking Oak Once more the gate behind me falls; Once more before my face I see the moulder’d Abbey-walls, That stand within the chace. Beyond the lodge the city lies, Beneath its drift of smoke; And ah! with what delighted eyes I turn to yonder oak. For when my passion first began, Ere that, which in me […]...
- Talking to Grief Ah, Grief, I should not treat you Like a homeless dog Who comes to the back door For a crust, for a meatless bone. I should trust you. I should coax you Into the house and give you Your own corner, A worn mat to lie on, Your own water dish. You think I don’t […]...
- Talking To Little Birdies Not a peep out of you now After the bedlam early this morning. Are you begging pardon of me Hidden up there among the leaves, Or are your brains momentarily overtaxed? You savvy a few things I don’t: The overlooked sunflower seed worth a holler; The traffic of cats in the yard; Strangers leaving the […]...
- Talking (and Singing) of the Nordic Man I Behold, my child, the Nordic man, And be as like him, as you can; His legs are long, his mind is slow, His hair is lank and made of tow. II And here we have the Alpine Race: Oh! What a broad and foolish face! His skin is of a dirty yellow. He is […]...
- Tonight I Can Write Tonight I can write the saddest lines. Write, for example, ‘The night is starry And the stars are blue and shiver in the distance.’ The night wind revolves in the sky and sings. Tonight I can write the saddest lines. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. Through nights like this one I […]...
- "I Love You Sweatheart" A man risked his life to write the words. A man hung upside down (an idiot friend Holding his legs?) with spray paint To write the words on a girder fifty feet above A highway. And his beloved, The next morning driving to work…? His words are not (meant to be) so unique. Does she […]...
- To His Mistress Objecting To Him Neither Toying Nor Talking You say I love not, ’cause I do not play Still with your curls, and kiss the time away. You blame me, too, because I can’t devise Some sport to please those babies in your eyes;- By love’s religion, I must here confess it, The most I love, when I the least express it. Small […]...
- Remembered Women FOR a woman’s face remembered as a spot of quick light on the flat land of dark night, For this memory of one mouth and a forehead they go on in the gray rain and the mud, they go on among the boots and guns. The horizon ahead is a thousand fang flashes, it is […]...
- Chamfort THERE’S Chamfort. He’s a sample. Locked himself in his library with a gun, Shot off his nose and shot out his right eye. And this Chamfort knew how to write And thousands read his books on how to live, But he himself didn’t know How to die by force of his own hand see? They […]...
- Radio Poem You little box, held to me escaping So that your valves should not break Carried from house to house to ship from sail to train, So that my enemies might go on talking to me, Near my bed, to my pain The last thing at night, the first thing in the morning, Of their victories […]...
- The White Room The obvious is difficult To prove. Many prefer The hidden. I did, too. I listened to the trees. They had a secret Which they were about to Make known to me And then didn’t. Summer came. Each tree On my street had its own Scheherazade. My nights Were a part of their wild Storytelling. We […]...
- Ambulances Closed like confessionals, they thread Loud noons of cities, giving back None of the glances they absorb. Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque, They come to rest at any kerb: All streets in time are visited. Then children strewn on steps or road, Or women coming from the shops Past smells of different dinners, […]...
- I reckon when I count it all I reckon when I count it all First Poets Then the Sun Then Summer Then the Heaven of God And then the List is done But, looking back the First so seems To Comprehend the Whole The Others look a needless Show So I write Poets All Their Summer lasts a Solid Year They can […]...
- Three Balls JABOWSKY’S place is on a side street and only the rain washes the dusty three balls. When I passed the window a month ago, there rested in proud isolation: A family bible with hasps of brass twisted off, a wooden clock with pendulum gone, And a porcelain crucifix with the glaze nicked where the left […]...
- Being Me! Wild are my ways, wilder than you think You will find me standing a little left of frame You will find me a little away from the meeting place I am that and much more, insignificant me. Yes I am the one with the faraway look Of sailors of vast dreamy oceans I look at […]...
- Sun and Shadow As I look from the isle, o’er its billows of green, To the billows of foam-crested blue, Yon bark, that afar in the distance is seen, Half dreaming, my eyes will pursue: Now dark in the shadow, she scatters the spray As the chaff in the stroke of the flail; Now white as the sea-gull, […]...
- Unlyric Love Song It is time to give that-of-myself which I could not at first: To offer you now at last my least and my worst: Minor, absurd preserves, The shell’s end-curves, A document kept at the back of a drawer, A tin hidden under the floor, Recalcitrant prides and hesitations: To pile them carefully in a desparate […]...
- One crown that no one seeks One crown that no one seeks And yet the highest head Its isolation coveted Its stigma deified While Pontius Pilate lives In whatsoever hell That coronation pierces him He recollects it well....
- Saddest Poem I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. Write, for instance: “The night is full of stars, And the stars, blue, shiver in the distance.” The night wind whirls in the sky and sings. I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too. On nights […]...
- There was a Young Lady Whose Eyes There was a young lady whose eyes, Were unique as to colour and size; When she opened them wide, People all turned aside, And started away in surprise....
- The Sun Have you ever seen Anything In your life More wonderful Than the way the sun, Every evening, Relaxed and easy, Floats toward the horizon And into the clouds or the hills, Or the rumpled sea, And is gone And how it slides again Out of the blackness, Every morning, On the other side of the […]...
- Blind It’s okay if the world goes with Venetian; Who cares what Italians don’t see? Or with Man’s Bluff (a temporary problem Healed by shrieks and cheating) or with date: Three hours of squirming repaid by laughs for years. But when an old woman, already deaf, Wakes from a night of headaches, and the dark Won’t […]...
- Hope is a strange invention Hope is a strange invention A Patent of the Heart In unremitting action Yet never wearing out Of this electric Adjunct Not anything is known But its unique momentum Embellish all we own...
- Nothing To Be Said For nations vague as weed, For nomads among stones, Small-statured cross-faced tribes And cobble-close families In mill-towns on dark mornings Life is slow dying. So are their separate ways Of building, benediction, Measuring love and money Ways of slow dying. The day spent hunting pig Or holding a garden-party, Hours giving evidence Or birth, advance […]...
- The Sum-Up It is not power and fame That make success; It is not rank or name Rate happiness. It is not honour due Nor pile of pelf: The pay-off is: Did you Enjoy yourself? A pal of days gone by I reckon more Of a success than I Who’ve gold in store His life, though none […]...
- At The Other End Of The Telescope the people are very small and shrink, Dwarves on the way to netsuke hell Bound for a flea circus in full Retreat toward sub-atomic particles difficult to keep in focus, the figures At that end are nearly indistinguishable, Generals at the heads of minute armies Differing little from fishwives, Emperors the same as eskimos Huddled […]...
- Argument Days that cannot bring you near Or will not, Distance trying to appear Something more obstinate, Argue argue argue with me Endlessly Neither proving you less wanted nor less dear. Distance: Remember all that land Beneath the plane; That coastline Of dim beaches deep in sand Stretching indistinguishably All the way, All the way to […]...
- Comfort Say! You’ve struck a heap of trouble Bust in business, lost your wife; No one cares a cent about you, You don’t care a cent for life; Hard luck has of hope bereft you, Health is failing, wish you’d die Why, you’ve still the sunshine left you And the big, blue sky. Sky so blue […]...
- The Great Grey Plain Out West, where the stars are brightest, Where the scorching north wind blows, And the bones of the dead gleam whitest, And the sun on a desert glows Yet within the selfish kingdom Where man starves man for gain, Where white men tramp for existence Wide lies the Great Grey Plain. No break in its […]...
- Fugue You see them vanish in their speeding cars, The many people hastening through the world, And wonder what they would have done before This time of time speed distance, random streams Of molecules hastened by what rising heat? Was there never a world where people just sat still? Yet they might be all of them […]...
- The Journey Of A Poem Compared To All The Sad Variety Of Travel A poem moves forward, Like the passages and percussions of trains in progress A pattern of recurrence, a hammer of repetetiveoccurrence A slow less and less heard Low thunder under all passengers Steel sounds tripping and tripled and Grinding, revolving, gripping, turning, and returning As the flung carpet of the wide countryside spreads out on […]...
- Sonnet 103: Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth Alack, what poverty my Muse brings forth, That having such a scope to show her pride, The argument all bare is of more worth Than when it hath my added praise beside. O, blame me not if I no more can write! Look in your glass, and there appears a face That overgoes my blunt […]...
- Looking For A Monk And Not Finding Him I took a small path leading Up a hill valley, finding there A temple, its gate covered With moss, and in front of The door but tracks of birds; In the room of the old monk No one was living, and I Staring through the window Saw but a hair duster hanging On the wall, […]...
- I Wait For You I wait for you. The years in silence pass And as the image, one, I wait for you again. The distance is in flame and clear one as glass, I, silent, wait with sadness, love and pain. The distance is in flame, and you are coming fast, But I’m afraid that you will change your […]...
- He Giveth His Beloved Sleep The long day passes with its load of sorrow: In slumber deep I lay me down to rest until tomorrow Thank God for sleep. Thank God for all respite from weary toiling, From cares that creep Across our lives like evil shadows, spoiling God’s kindly sleep. We plough and sow, and, as the hours grow […]...
- Friends Now must I these three praise Three women that have wrought What joy is in my days: One because no thought, Nor those unpassing cares, No, not in these fifteen Many-times-troubled years, Could ever come between Mind and delighted mind; And one because her hand Had strength that could unbind What none can understand, What […]...
- Human Knowledge Since thou readest in her what thou thyself hast there written, And, to gladden the eye, placest her wonders in groups; Since o’er her boundless expanses thy cords to extend thou art able, Thou dost think that thy mind wonderful Nature can grasp. Thus the astronomer draws his figures over the heavens, So that he […]...
- Request to a Year If the year is meditating a suitable gift, I should like it to be the attitude Of my great – great – grandmother, Legendary devotee of the arts, Who having eight children And little opportunity for painting pictures, Sat one day on a high rock Beside a river in Switzerland And from a difficult distance […]...