ΑΓΑΠΗΜΕΝΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ

 

ΑΓΑΠΗΜΕΝΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ

ΑΓΑΠΗΜΕΝΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ

 

 

ΑΓΑΠΗΜΕΝΑ ΒΙΒΛΙΑ

ΦΙΛΙΠ ΛΑΡΚΙΝ

PHILIP LARKIN

TO FAILURE

You do not come dramatically, with dragons

That rear up with my life between their paws

And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,

The horses panicking; nor as a clause

Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,

What out-of-pocket charges must be borne

Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost

That's seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.

It is these sunless afternoons, I find

Install you at my elbow like a bore.

The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I'm

Aware the days pass quicker than before,

Smell staler too. And once they fall behind

They look like ruin. You have been here some time.

ΦΙΛΙΠ ΛΑΡΚΙΝ

PHILIP LARKIN

GOING                             

There is an evening coming in

Across the fields, one never seen before,

That lights no lamps.

Silken it seems at a distance, yet

When it is drawn up over the knees and breast

It brings no comfort.

Where has the tree gone, that locked

Earth to the sky? What is under my hands,

That I cannot feel?

What loads my hands down?

ΦΙΛΙΠ ΛΑΡΚΙΝ!

PHILIP LARKIN

LOVE SONGS IN AGE

She kept her songs, they kept so little space,
The covers pleased her:
One bleached from lying in a sunny place,
One marked in circles by a vase of water,
One mended, when a tidy fit had seized her,
And coloured, by her daughter -
So they had waited, till, in widowhood
She found them, looking for something else, and stood

Relearning how each frank submissive chord
Had ushered in
Word after sprawling hyphenated word,
And the unfailing sense of being young
Spread out like a spring-woken tree, wherein
That hidden freshness sung,
That certainty of time laid up in store
As when she played them first. But, even more,

The glare of that much-mentionned brilliance, love,
Broke out, to show
Its bright incipience sailing above,
Still promising to solve, and satisfy,
And set unchangeably in order. So
To pile them back, to cry,
Was hard, without lamely admitting how
It had not done so then, and could not now.

ΦΙΛΙΠ ΛΑΡΚΙΝ!

PHILIP LARKIN

TRIPLE TIME

This empty street, this sky to blandness scoured,
This aire, a little indistict with autumm
Like a reflection, constitute the present -
A time tradicionally soured,
A time unrecommended by event.

But equally they make up something else:
This is the future furthest childhood saw
Between long houses, under travelling skies,
Heard in contendig bells -
An air lambent with adult enterprise.

And on another day will be the past,
A valley cropped by fan neglected chances
That we insensately forbore to fleece.
On this we blame out last
Threadbare perspectives, seasonal decrease.

ΦΙΛΙΠ ΛΑΡΚΙΝ!

PHILIP LARKIN


LOVE

The difficult part of love
Is being selfish enough,
Is having the blind persistence
To upset an existence
Just for your own sake.
What cheek it must take.

And then the unselfish side –
How can you be satisfied,
Putting someone else first
So that you come off worst?
My life is for me.
As well ignore gravity.

Still, vicious or virtuous,
Love suits most of us.
Only the bleeder found
Selfish this wrong way round
Is ever wholly rebuffed,
And he can get stuffed.

ΛΑΡΚΙΝ!

PHILIP LARKIN (1922-1985)


BREADFRUIT

Boys dream of native girls who bring breadfruit,
Whatever they are,
As bribes to teach them how to execute
Sixteen sexual positions on the sand;
This makes them join (the boys) the tennis club,
Jive at the Mecca, use deodorants, and
On Saturdays squire ex-schoolgirls to the pub
By private car.

Such uncorrected visions end in church
Or registrar:
A mortgaged semi- with a silver birch;
Nippers; the widowed mum; having to scheme
With money; illness; age. So absolute
Maturity falls, when old men sit and dream
Of naked native girls who bring breadfruit
Whatever they are.



Η εικονιζόμενη κ. Antonella Mosetti είναι η αποστολέας αυτού του ποιήματος.