A Poem By Philip Larkin
The Buddhist in me, really likes these verses. Larkin’s words capture with unemotional observational precision the transience of life. Given the amount of violence, not the TV theatrical variety, but bloody life-wrecking violence in our big cities, and in many places around our world, it is timely to take a step back. You and I my friend, are only “one man” and our time will come — to pass on. I find a certain peace in understanding that “loss” is the way of all things.
Continuing To Live
A habit formed to get necessaries —
Is nearly always losing, or going without.
It varies.
This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise —
Ah, if the game were poker, yes,
You might discard them, draw a full house!
But it’s chess.
And once you have walked the length of your mind, what
You command is clear as a lading-list.
Anything else must not, for you, be thought
To exist.
And what’s the profit? Only that, in time,
We half-identify the blind impress
All our behavings bear, may trace it home.
But to confess,
On that green evening when our death begins,
Just what it was, is hardly satisfying,
Since it applied only to one man once,
And that one dying.
