LARKIN REVISITED
For Harry Chambers
After the posthumous exhibition
at the library, I walked with my daughter
(a student at Hull and sure she’d seen him once
in the lift) down Newland Avenue
to Pearson Park. I pointed out the house
where Larkin’s flat had been and told her how,
more than twenty years before, a friend
and I had been persons from Porlock.
He’d answered the door in a dressing gown,
vest, grey flannels and, ruefully, let us in.
He was frying sausages for his tea,
he explained, before a bridge evening
with his secretary and her parents.
Nevertheless, with traditional jazz
in the background on his Pye Black Box,
he was very generous with the G & Ts,
shying the empty bottles, across the room,
to land unbroken in a basket full of
screwed-up typing paper. Nothing was said.
Our host seemed pleased rather than surprised.
In the loo was a print of Blake’s ‘Union
Of Body And Soul’ and a cartoon of
a pantomime horse, ‘Ah! At last, I’ve found you!’
Before our visit, my friend had sent him
one of my poems – as a calling card
or warning. It was more or less about
dancing. Larkin commented kindly
on the piece, mentioned he was writing one
around a similar theme. “Your fault then,”
my daughter asked, “The Dance unfinished?”
“Perhaps. But think of As Bad As A Mile,
‘Of failure spreading back up the arm…
The apple unbitten in the palm.’
Yet all those empty bottles landing
exactly where they were aimed in an
already cushioned environment.
So, a writer’s life exposed, irony,
‘the only end of age’ – or all three?”
Note: Two more accounts of the visit may be found in ‘AN ENORMOUS YES In Memoriam Philip Larkin (1922-1985)’, edited by Harry Chambers, Peterloo Poets, 1986 and ‘LARKIN AT SIXTY’, edited by Anthony Thwaite, Faber and Faber 1982 respectively
Gav Cross
June 25, 2011I love it when my rss follow pops another Selzer nugget in the inbox!
This one I particularly enjoyed – both because of the writing and because it prompted me to pick and read a couple of the good librarian’s works!
David Selzer
June 26, 2011Thank you, Gav. I’m sure he would have approved!
Clive Watkins
June 29, 2011I seem to remember, David, though from a very long time ago indeed, this story of your dropping in on Larkin, but perhaps I am mistaken. Who was your companion, I wonder, and what poem was it served as “a calling card / or warning”? – Clive
David Selzer
July 5, 2011You remember correctly, Clive. My companion was Harry Chambers and the poem was ‘Excuses To The Empress,’ which I’ve copied below for curiosity’s sake. It was written in 1963 and published in NATIONAL ANTHOLOGY OF STUDENT POETRY (U.L.I.E.S.A 1964).
EXCUSES TO THE EMPRESS
(For Harry Chambers)
‘A Wallflower Regrets’ – my memoirs, madam.
A prop to any wall at party, dance,
Sports field, and battlefield no doubt. A dreamer
Due I’m told for no good end; a sceptic
Begging shrilly for someone’s shoe toe.
Regrets, not that I fail to beat the hearties
By their own rules – nothing so pure, just chagrin
That I get by art what some it seems
Achieve through instinct. A few blank verse lines
Will so neatly pose, conclude the verbal
Problems of ‘Death’, ‘Ideals’ and ‘Love’ – always
Veridical, always removed from action.
But even shufflers at a dance create
Order by doing. Till the music ends
Their movement copes quite well. One would be glad
To Astaire it down the boulevard,
Not know the Emperor had it built that wide
To shoot with ease a rioting populace.
Some Freudian maxim was ignored to make
Collecting books more valuable than gleaning
R.S.V.P. cards or plucking girls.
At school I learned your hurdles must remain
Upright. To dancing-class I went for sex
And company, achieved a few close holds,
Exchanged some clichés. In childhood my father
Died at war. Perhaps a death that might
Befit a dancing man would have appeased
The lack of father’s hands, the aching gaucheness,
More than demise from chronic sinusitis,
Or the burial with a wooden cross
That still has the wrong initial on it.
But I am mawkish madam. No doubt
You would concede there is no proper way
To lose a father. At a party’s close,
I think sometimes, I ought to fling my host’s
Prize pewter tankard in his hearth and talking
Wildly shuffle to the street. Instead
Am thankful my father died with irony.
No thanks, I shall not function at your party.
David Selzer