Reference Back

Reference Back 

Stanza 1 

That was a pretty one, I heard you call 

From the unsatisfactory hall

To the unsatisfactory room where I 

Played record after record, idly,

Wasting my time at home, that you 

Looked so much forward to. 

This stanza tells us that he is stuck somewhere that he feels he should not be. the Second to last stanza shows us that it is at home so we are lead to believe that the voice from the 'unsatisfactory hall' could be infact his mother. This poem is very similar to other by Larkin such as As bad as a mile where he describes missing throwing an apple core into a bin as failing in life. We are made aware that he is unhappy with his current situation because of the constant use of words such as 'unsatisfactory' which shows that he feels he does not feel as if he as achieved much in life. He would love to leave home and start a fresh new life however he feels as if that would hurt his mother. it could also be down to the fact that he does not like change, we learn this from toads and toads revisited. 

Stanza 2 

Oliver's Riverside Blues, it was. And now 

I shall, I suppose, always remember how 

The flock of notes those antique Negroes blew

Out of Chicago  air into 

 A huge remembering pre-electric horn 

The year after I was born 

Three decades later made this sudden bridge 

From your unsatisfactory age 

To my unsatisfactory prime. 

This stanza makes me believe that the only reason that he has been 'trapped' at home was his and his mother shared love of music such as Oliver's Riverside Blues. And know after many years of living together they have grown apart and now thirty years later they are theoretically separated with her unsatisfactory age and his unsatisfactory prime. 

Stanza 3 

Truly, though our element is time,

We're not suited to the long perspectives

Open at each instant of our lives. 

They link us to our losses: worse, 

They show us what we have as it once was ,

Blindingly undiminished, just as though 

By acting differently we could have kept it so. 

This stanza reiterates the gap between them, they could have been closer but they cannot live together because of the age range. Whatever they had is now lost and neither of them want to admit to that, they both keep trying but it is no use.