To all who suffer
“What will survive of us is love.”
My Arundel tomb undiscovered
Where Larkin’s spirit hovered
Remains of my fool’s gold
No memory hand holding mine
No effigy, my past untold
To walk in Larkin’s shoes
Dread the dead-end my reality
I’m am lost to ABBCAC modality
A chameleon, a pretense plasterer
Wish I could master His caster craft
Mine a throwaway manufacturer
-My hand- yearns for any touch
Poet sculpturer to mend my broken heart
To sleep day and night at the base of art
Where shadows of light and dark meet
Wish I were the absurd little dogs
Laying happily under their feet
Phillip seven stanzas immortalize
His one line captures my century’s wealth
Short on depth my knowledge beneath his stealth
Breath of melancholy my master’s carpentry
I’ll kneel humbly three temples away
His soul worshiped in all eternity
January 7, 2013
Copyright Leaking Pen 2012 –
An Arundel Tomb By Philip Larkin
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I suffer
Leaking Pen
Has my message been misunderstood?
oh forgive Philip for trespassing on your sacred territory, I should have stayed away
My deepest sorrows
Paul
An Arundel Tomb
By Philip Larkin
Side by side, their faces blurred,
The earl and countess lie in stone,
Their proper habits vaguely shown
As jointed armour, stiffened pleat,
And that faint hint of the absurd—
The little dogs under their feet.
Such plainness of the pre-baroque
Hardly involves the eye, until
It meets his left-hand gauntlet, still
Clasped empty in the other; and
One sees, with a sharp tender shock,
His hand withdrawn, holding her hand.
They would not think to lie so long.
Such faithfulness in effigy
Was just a detail friends would see:
A sculptor’s sweet commissioned grace
Thrown off in helping to prolong
The Latin names around the base.
They would not guess how early in
Their supine stationary voyage
The air would change to soundless damage,
Turn the old tenantry away;
How soon succeeding eyes begin
To look, not read. Rigidly they
Persisted, linked, through lengths and breadths
Of time. Snow fell, undated. Light
Each summer thronged the glass. A bright
Litter of birdcalls strewed the same
Bone-riddled ground. And up the paths
The endless altered people came,
Washing at their identity.
Now, helpless in the hollow of
An unarmorial age, a trough
Of smoke in slow suspended skeins
Above their scrap of history,
Only an attitude remains:
Time has transfigured them into
Untruth. The stone fidelity
They hardly meant has come to be
Their final blazon, and to prove
Our almost-instinct almost true:
What will survive of us is love.
I can understand
this beautiful poem. I looked up the tomb it's based on, it's an inspiring image.
The tomb lends itself well to curiosity and musings about these two. It really
sticks with you. Thanks for posting this poem, I was unfamiliar with it.
raskin
The Larkin in me has surfaced
Leaking Pen
Dear Raskin
This poem An Arundel Tomb is considered Larkin's masterpiece, I am so haunted by it, I still can not get out of my mind, I am so blown away by it, it hit a nerve in me, I keep reading it over and over again, it inspired me to write two more poems to purge its effects from my soul, I feel my journey is not yet complete till I find the hand of love that will bless my existence...and my search goes on, I am gald you enjoyed it too
Truly
Paul