With trepidation I append today’s poem. It is too dense, ambitious for the time we have. Some poems are amuse-bouches, tasty bites to whet the appetite; others ask us to devote hours to hear them out. My beef with Shakespeare is he’s too rich for casual consumption. What thoughtful can I say about, say, Hamlet or As You Like It, in our allotted minutes – Give them a spin, they’re really good, you’ll like them?

Philip Larkin’s “The Whitsun Weddings” looms too large for our occasion. A few hundred words almost insults its immensity, but is omitting mention a juster tribute? Read the poem – a few times – it’s not easy – or if you know it, you’ll rejoice to revisit. It’s one of those poems that reliably repays rereading.

Its premise is unimpressive, almost grimly humdrum. The poet, traveling alone (and somehow, we assume, always alone), has boarded a train to London after work. It is the Saturday of Whitsun weekend. Short for White Sunday, Whitsun was the English name for the seventh Sunday after Pentecost on the Christian calendar, a perfect time for working-class folks to marry, being one of England’s few long weekends. It’s hot; the steamy train cars stink; the poet desultorily notices the desultory scenery, at first failing to observe all the wedding parties huddled in the afternoon shade. “Sun destroys,” he sighs, “The interest of what’s happening in the shade.”

The human landscape, having snagged his attention, is as dreary as the physical:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedgrinning and pomaded, girls In parodies of fashion, heels and veils, All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event Waving goodbyeTo something that survived it. Struck, I leant More promptly out next time, more curiously, And saw it all again in different terms: The fathers with broad belts under their suits And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat; An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms, The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes, The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.

(Humans make such a shabby show to Larkin’s mordant eye.)

Yet as the poet scrutinizes the well-wishers on the platform waving the newlyweds off to London honeymoons, a note of hope, even of grandeur, sneaks in, notwithstanding these souls’ pathetic ordinariness:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published each face seemed to define Just what it saw departing: children frowned At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical; The women sharedThe secret like a happy funeral;While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared At a religious wounding.

“Success so huge,” “happy funeral,” “religious wounding” – this is the language of defining rites, instants of incarnation.

The energy of the couples sparks in the sighing poet a vision almost ethereal:

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedI thought of London spread out in the sun, Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across Bright knots of railPast standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail Travelling coincidence.

“Wheat” – the staff of life – “aimed” – that is, dispatched with purpose – and urgency – “raced” – past death – “blackened moss”. How large is life when imaginatively you enter into it! – large

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published with all the power That being changed can give.

The poem’s exquisitely complex stanzas and rhyme schemes (which don’t read as rhymes), its exhausted diction, the weighty multivalence of almost every word, merit a seminar, not an hello. Yet how heartening, even in passing, its generosity and affirmation. None of us is shabby, each imbued, like a god,

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published with all the power That being changed can give.

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe Whitsun Weddings

Philip Larkin (1922-1985)

That Whitsun, I was late getting away: Not till aboutOne-twenty on the sunlit SaturdayDid my three-quarters-empty train pull out,All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense Of being in a hurry gone. We ranBehind the backs of houses, crossed a streetOf blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence The river’s level drifting breadth began,Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.

All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept For miles inland,A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept. Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and Canals with floatings of industrial froth; A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped And rose: and now and then a smell of grass Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth Until the next town, new and nondescript, Approached with acres of dismantled cars.

At first, I didn’t notice what a noise The weddings madeEach station that we stopped at: sun destroys The interest of what’s happening in the shade,And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls I took for porters larking with the mails, And went on reading. Once we started, though, We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls In parodies of fashion, heels and veils, All posed irresolutely, watching us go,

As if out on the end of an event Waving goodbyeTo something that survived it. Struck, I leant More promptly out next time, more curiously, And saw it all again in different terms: The fathers with broad belts under their suits And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat; An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms, The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes, The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that

Marked off the girls unreally from the rest. Yes, from cafésAnd banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days Were coming to an end. All down the lineFresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;The last confetti and advice were thrown,And, as we moved, each face seemed to define Just what it saw departing: children frowned At something dull; fathers had never known

Success so huge and wholly farcical; The women sharedThe secret like a happy funeral;While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared At a religious wounding. Free at last,And loaded with the sum of all they saw,We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam. Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast Long shadows over major roads, and forSome fifty minutes, that in time would seem

Just long enough to settle hats and say I nearly died, A dozen marriages got under way.They watched the landscape, sitting side by side—An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, And someone running up to bowl—and none Thought of the others they would never meet Or how their lives would all contain this hour. I thought of London spread out in the sun, Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:

There we were aimed. And as we raced across Bright knots of railPast standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail Travelling coincidence; and what it held Stood ready to be loosed with all the power That being changed can give. We slowed again,And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelledA sense of falling, like an arrow-shower Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.