Aubade

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
 Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
 In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
 Till then I see what's really always there:
 Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
 Making all thought impossible but how
 And where and when I shall myself die.
 Arid interrogation: yet the dread
 Of dying, and being dead,
 Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.
 The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse -
The good not done, the love not given, time
 Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because
 An only life can take so long to climb
 Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;
 But at the total emptiness for ever,
 The sure extinction that we travel to
 And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,
 Not to be anywhere,
 And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid
 No trick dispels. Religion used to try,
 That vast, moth-eaten musical brocade
 Created to pretend we never die,
 And specious stuff that says No rational being
 Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing
 That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,
 No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,
 Nothing to love or link with,
 The anasthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,
 A small, unfocused blur, a standing chill
 That slows each impulse down to indecision.
 Most things may never happen: this one will,
 And realisation of it rages out
 In furnace-fear when we are caught without
 People or drink. Courage is no good:
 It means not scaring others. Being brave
 Lets no one off the grave.
 Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.
 It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,
 Have always known, know that we can't escape,
 Yet can't accept. One side will have to go.
 Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring
 In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring
 Intricate rented world begins to rouse.
 The sky is white as clay, with no sun.
 Work has to be done.
 Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

- Philip Larkin

This is an unfortunate and very true diagnosis of my desire to be useful, and especially of my desire to see young people at their best (which can be magnificent, despite the utter depths of evil that can be their worst). Perhaps it drives not just me but everyone. Larkin has put it into words far better than I could ever have.

No newspaper or government-approved message, no numbers or figures, can acknowledge this darkness behind our copious consumption, our economic creed, our need for forward momentum. An oath on anaesthetic and opiates! We might make light of it, but what light we can make only casts the longer shadow.