High Windows & MCMXIV by Philip Larkin İrem Bezcioğlu

High Windows When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives— Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if Anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought, That'll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He And his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless. When I see a couple of kids And guess he's fucking her and she's Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, I know this is paradise Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives— Bonds and gestures pushed to one side Like an outdated combine harvester, And everyone young going down the long slide To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if Anyone looked at me, forty years back, And thought, That'll be the life; No God any more, or sweating in the dark About hell and that, or having to hide What you think of the priest. He And his lot will all go down the long slide Like free bloody birds. And immediately Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: The sun-comprehending glass, And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.

Larkin employs words that have more than one connotation. Example: The long slide: A slide can be the familiar playground slide which children ride for the fun of it and it is also a slipping or a regression (as in the verb backsliding). Larkin intends both meanings.

 Loss of religion: As the youth journey down the long slide there will be no “God any more”, no sweating about hell. The sky becomes endless, nowhere and nothing. But the sky at the end of the poem is described as “nowhere” (like God, who is omnipresent), “nothing” (like God who is not a physical being) and endless (again, like God). Maybe Larkin is trying to say that no matter how far you go down the slide, God is still there.

 Loss of youth: At the start he describes the couple, as if he is jealous or is regretting lost days. At the end the narrator stands inside, looking longingly out the windows at the endless, boundless freedom of the outside. At the end the narrator stands inside, looking longingly out the windows at the endless, boundless freedom of the outside.

High Windows is a poem about distances: the distance between age and youth, between high window and pavement, heaven and hell, man and God.

“MCMXIV” are the roman numerals for “1914”. “1914” is the beginning of the First World War = The Great War = The war to end all wars = The war that would be over by Christmas

MCMXIV Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark; Those long uneven lines Standing as patiently As if they were stretched outside The Oval or Villa Park, The crowns of hats, the sun On moustached archaic faces Grinning as if it were all An August Bank Holiday lark; And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play Called after kings and queens, The tin advertisements For cocoa and twist, and the pubs Wide open all day-- And the shut shops, the bleached Established names on the sunblinds, The farthings and sovereigns, And dark-clothed children at play Called after kings and queens, The tin advertisements For cocoa and twist, and the pubs Wide open all day--

And the countryside not caring: The place names all hazed over With flowering grasses, and fields Shadowing Domesday lines Under wheat's restless silence; The differently-dressed servants With tiny rooms in huge houses, The dust behind limousines; And the countryside not caring: The place names all hazed over With flowering grasses, and fields Shadowing Domesday lines Under wheat's restless silence; The differently-dressed servants With tiny rooms in huge houses, The dust behind limousines; Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word--the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again. Never such innocence, Never before or since, As changed itself to past Without a word--the men Leaving the gardens tidy, The thousands of marriages, Lasting a little while longer: Never such innocence again.

Thanks for listening !