`Profound Glee'

Directionless browsing turned up two poems about Philip Larkin. First, James Merrill’s “Philip Larkin (1922-1985)”:

“He’s gone somewhere
But left his writing,
Plain and inviting
As a Windsor chair.

“The sitter? Every sort.
Each struck that artless pose
We face our maker in. God knows
The likeness hurt.

“His signature’s
Worm-drill and gleam of cherry
-- Vacant now? Unwary
Reader, all yours.”

Merrill is conflicted over Larkin, man and poet. The first two lines read like an obliquely grim nod to Larkin’s “Aubade.” The other poem, “A Valediction for Philip Larkin,” is by Clive James, and is included in The Book of My Enemy: Collected Verse 1958-2003. Its “Aubade”-informed opening resembles Merrill’s. With 33 five-line stanzas, it’s too long to quote in full. Here’s a sample:

“You never traveled much but now you have,
Into the land whose brochures you like least:
That drear Bulgaria beyond the grave
Where wonders have definitely ceased –
Ranked as a dead loss even in the East.”

James was in Kenya when Larkin died, on Dec. 2, 1985, and notes:

“Friends will remember until their turn comes
What they were doing when the new came through.”

I was in Albany, N.Y., sitting in the office used by reporters in the Albany County Courthouse, furnished with a table, two chairs, two computer monitors and a battered file cabinet. The cast-iron radiators banged. The floor was made of uneven planks, and the room was narrow, like a long closet. The ceiling was high, fitted with a strip of fluorescent bulbs. The room was always dim and overheated. I read Larkin’s obituary in the New York Times – news of “nothing more terrible, nothing more true,” as Larkin put it. Most of James’ poem is African travelogue, but he returns eventually to Larkin:

“Forgive me, but I hardly felt a trace
Of grief. Just sudden fear your being dead
So soon had left us disinherited.”

Larkin’s death widened the distance between us and the tradition, receding in time, of Auden, Hardy, Housman and Wordsworth. When a voice of plainspoken eloquence is silenced, frauds grow emboldened. Larkin’s leaving leaves us more vulnerable to the calculating and their naïve followers. James rightly honors Larkin’s clarity and craft:

“The truth is that you reveled in your craft.
Profound glee charged your sentences with wit.
You beat them into stanza form and laughed:
They didn’t sound like poetry one bit,
Except for being absolutely it.”