The Whitsun Weddings – Philip Larkin Poem

by
  1. That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
  2. Not till about
  3. One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
  4. Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
  5. All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
  6. Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
  7. Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
  8. Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
  9. The river’s level drifting breadth began,
  10. Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.
  11. All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
  12. For miles inland,
  13. A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
  14. Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
  15. Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
  16. A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
  17. And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
  18. Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
  19. Until the next town, new and nondescript,
  20. Approached with acres of dismantled cars.
  21. At first, I didn’t notice what a noise
  22. The weddings made
  23. Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
  24. The interest of what’s happening in the shade,
  25. And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
  26. I took for porters larking with the mails,
  27. And went on reading. Once we started, though,
  28. We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
  29. In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
  30. All posed irresolutely, watching us go,
  31. As if out on the end of an event
  32. Waving goodbye
  33. To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
  34. More promptly out next time, more curiously,
  35. And saw it all again in different terms:
  36. The fathers with broad belts under their suits
  37. And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
  38. An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
  39. The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
  40. The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that
  41. Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
  42. Yes, from cafés
  43. And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
  44. Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
  45. Were coming to an end. All down the line
  46. Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
  47. The last confetti and advice were thrown,
  48. And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
  49. Just what it saw departing: children frowned
  50. At something dull; fathers had never known
  51. Success so huge and wholly farcical;
  52. The women shared
  53. The secret like a happy funeral;
  54. While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
  55. At a religious wounding. Free at last,
  56. And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
  57. We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
  58. Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
  59. Long shadows over major roads, and for
  60. Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem
  61. Just long enough to settle hats and say
  62. I nearly died,
  63. A dozen marriages got under way.
  64. They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
  65. —An Odeon went past, a cooling tower,
  66. And someone running up to bowl—and none
  67. Thought of the others they would never meet
  68. Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
  69. I thought of London spread out in the sun,
  70. Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:
  71. There we were aimed. And as we raced across
  72. Bright knots of rail
  73. Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
  74. Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
  75. Travelling coincidence; and what it held
  76. Stood ready to be loosed with all the power
  77. That being changed can give. We slowed again,
  78. And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
  79. A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
  80. Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.