Aubade Analysis

<p>I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.<br>

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.<br>

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.<br>

Till then I see what's really always there:<br>

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,<br>

Making all thought impossible but how<br>

And where and when I shall myself die.<br>

Arid interrogation: yet the dread<br>

Of dying, and being dead,<br>

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.<br>

<br>

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse<br>

-- The good not done, the love not given, time<br>

Torn off unused -- nor wretchedly because<br>

An only life can take so long to climb<br>

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;<br>

But at the total emptiness for ever,<br>

The sure extinction that we travel to<br>

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,<br>

Not to be anywhere,<br>

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.<br>

<br>

This is a special way of being afraid<br>

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,<br>

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade<br>

Created to pretend we never die,<br>

And specious stuff that says

.: :.

i think the postman represents the routine we all go through and that this daily routine of our lives is what distracts us from thinking about death at least during the day. When its night, and we are still and it is quiet then death comes in the picture for so many of us. Perhaps the postman represents a new day, and one closer to death, but it establishes routine and how we get so caught up in our routine.

| Posted on 2009-12-07 | by a guest

.: Aubade :.

Aubade is a song at dawn, and this poem is framed as the thoughts that pass through his head in the darkened time before the day begins, when he is unable to escape thoughts of his own death, and with them, thoughts of death generally.
Larkin is writing an aubade which is an anti-aubade. There is no girl in his bed. In fact the whole poem is about how the coming of day reminds Larkin of how utterly alone we are all the time because our death is both personal and private. I think Larkin regularly gets his effect of despair by taking well-known clichés of romantic love poetry and turning them back on themselves as he does here.
The image of the postmen going like doctors from house to house at the end is particularly strong. Not only do the postmen mark 'the dawn of a new day' (which for Larkin is 'a day nearer to death') but they re-enforce the idea of aloneness by reminding us that even when people 'stay in touch' they can only 'stay in touch' because they are already at a distance.

| Posted on 2006-02-26 | by Approved Guest