Aubade by Philip Larkin

<p>Production and Sound Design by Kevin Seaman</p><p>Aubade</p><p>by Philip Larkin</p><p>I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.    </p><p>Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.    </p><p>In time the curtain-edges will grow light.    </p><p>Till then I see what’s really always there:    </p><p>Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,    </p><p>Making all thought impossible but how    </p><p>And where and when I shall myself die.    </p><p>Arid interrogation: yet the dread</p><p>Of dying, and being dead,</p><p>Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.</p><p> </p><p>The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse    </p><p>—The good not done, the love not given, time    </p><p>Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because    </p><p>An only life can take so long to climb</p><p>Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;    </p><p>But at the total emptiness for ever,</p><p>The sure extinction that we travel to</p><p>And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,    </p><p>Not to be anywhere,</p><p>And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.</p><p> </p><p>This is a special way of being afraid</p><p>No trick dispels. Religion used to try,</p><p>That vast moth-eaten musical brocade</p><p>Created to pretend we never die,</p><p>And specious stuff that says No rational being</p><p>Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing</p><p>That this is what we fear—no sight, no sound,    </p><p>No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,    </p><p>Nothing to love or link with,</p><p>The anaesthetic from which none come round.</p><p> </p><p>And so it stays just on the edge of vision,    </p><p>A small unfocused blur, a standing chill    </p><p>That slows each impulse down to indecision.    </p><p>Most things may never happen: this one will,    </p><p>And realisation of it rages out</p><p>In furnace-fear when we are caught without    </p><p>People or drink. Courage is no good:</p><p>It means not scaring others. Being brave    </p><p>Lets no one off the grave.</p><p>Death is no different whined at than withstood.</p><p> </p><