Yesterday (16 May) I came across a wonderful reading of Aubade, a poem by Philip Larkin and best of all it is read by the poet himself.
The poem expresses Larkin’s fear of “unresting death” “the anisthetic from which no one comes round”. As an atheist the poet has no faith in an after life, religion is merely “an ancient moth-eaten brocade”. We can not escape death although we try to avoid thinking about his presence by throwing ourselves into drinking and socialising, however when other people and booze are not present we can not avoid grappling with our fear of the grim reaper. As Larkin puts it, “some things may never happen, this one will …”.
The poem’s description of why we fear death is masterful. It is the lack of touch, of being able to think or, indeed being cognisant of anything which we fear. It is pointless to tell a being not to fear the thing it can not see as it is this very lack of being able to see or feel which we, in essence fear.
For the reading visit http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDr_SRhJs80 and of
