"Nothing, like something, happens anywhere."

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "I Remember, I Remember.")

The air deals blows: surely too hard, too often?
No: it is bent on bringing summer down.
Dead leaves desert in thousands, outwards, upwards,
Numerous as birds; but the birds fly away....

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "Autumn.")

Life is first boredom, then fear.
Whether or not we use it, it goes,
And leaves what something hidden from us chose,
And age, and then the only end of age.

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "Dockery and Son.")

But it dies hard, that world;
Or, being dead,
Putrescently is pearled....

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "On Being Twenty-six.")

Now they express
All that's content to wear a worn-out coat,
All actions done in patient hopelessness,
All that ignores the silences of death,
Thinking no further than the hand can hold,
All that grows old,
Yet works on uselessly with shortened breath.

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "I see a girl dragged by the wrists.")

Books; china; a life
Reprehensibly perfect.

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "Poetry of Departures.")

On me your voice falls as they say love should,
Like an enormous yes. My Crescent City
Is where your speech alone is understood.

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "For Sidney Bechet.")

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(Which was rather late for me)?
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. (Written June 16, 1967). Annus Mirabilis, st. 1, High Windows (1974).)

In frames as large as rooms that face all ways
And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,
Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise
Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine
Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves
Of how life should be.

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "Essential Beauty.")

My age fallen away like white swaddling
Floats in the middle distance, becomes
An inhabited cloud.

(Philip Larkin (1922-1986), British poet. "Age.")