2017.02.15 High Windows by Pip Larkin | Postry Foundation
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High Windows
BY PHILIP LARKIN
When I see a couple of kids
‘And guess he’s fucking her and she’s
or wearing a diaphragm,
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Like an outdated combine harvester,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
back,
Anyone looked at me, forty yea
‘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.
Philip Larkin, "High Windows" trom Collected Poems, Copyright @ Estate of Philip Larkin, Reprinted by permission of
Faber and Faber, Ld.
Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)
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