british poetry

Read by Michael Stuhlbarg

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

The Night City

BY W. S. GRAHAM

Unmet at Euston in a dream

Of London under Turner’s steam

Misting the iron gantries, I

Found myself running away

From Scotland into the golden city.

I ran down Gray’s Inn Road and ran

Till I was under a black bridge.

This was me at nineteen

Late at night arriving between

The buildings of the City of London.

And the I (O I have fallen down)

Fell in my dream beside the Bank

Of England’s wall to be, me

With my money belt of Northern ice.

I found Eliot and he said yes

And sprang into a Holmes cab.

Boswell passed me in the fog

Going to visit Whistler who

Was with John Donne who had just seen

Paul Potts shouting on Soho Green.

Midnight. I hear the moon

Light chiming on St Paul’s.

The City is empty. Night

Watchmen are drinking their tea,

The Fire had burnt out.

The Plague’s pits had closed

And gone into literature.

Between the big buildings

I sat like a flea crouched

In the stopped works of a watch.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman

Aubade

by Philip Larkin

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.    

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.    

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.    

Till then I see what’s really always there:    

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,    

Making all thought impossible but how    

And where and when I shall myself die.    

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse    

—The good not done, the love not given, time    

Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because    

An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;    

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,    

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,    

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,    

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just on the edge of vision,    

A small unfocused blur, a standing chill    

That slows each impulse down to indecision.    

Most things may never happen: this one will,    

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without    

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave    

Lets no one off the grave.

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape.    

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,    

Have always known, know that we can’t escape,    

Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring    

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world begins to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun.

Work has to be done.

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman