Midnight's blues

Posted Tuesday morning, January 19, 2021.

Detail from “The Village Green at Night” by Sir George Clausen. Sometime between 1890 and 1910, possibly later. Via ArtUK.

6:37 a.m. Does Crayola still make a crayon in the color they used to call Midnight Blue? The sky has gone from the black to that color, which I think they should rename Insomniac's Blues.

Meanwhile, what Harold Bloom said about the best poetry being about death and loss and how reading it gave him courage to face his own sorrows? One of my favorite poems by Philip Larkin, and one of the most quotable---"soundless dark", "The sure extinction that we travel to/And shall be lost in always" (Hello, Hamlet), "Religion...that vast, moth-eaten, musical brocade", "Death is no different whined at than withstood", "Telephones crouch, getting ready to ring/in locked up offices", "Postmen like doctors go from house to house". By the way, I got up late for an insomniac. I waked to the soundless dark at 4:30...

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 anesthetic 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 realization 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.

---”Aubade” by Philip Larkin.

Comments

[Anne Marie]

What an awesome poem, thank you for sharing!