Because I wanted to read this tonight, I thought I'd share it with you all. In the 17 or so years since I first read this poem, I have never come across another that I've uniformly kept on wishing I had written. I have liked others over the years, but this one continues to apply. Probably goes to show that I'm not the cheeriest person, but oh well. It's a good poem.

Aubade

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 anasthetic 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 realisation 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.

Philip Larkin

Miguel bought me a jigsaw puzzle. 750 pieces, a sort of pastoral scene of a stone wall with a wrought iron gate in it, and trees behind. So lots of stone pieces and lots of leaf pieces. I've been working on it every spare moment since the weekend. It's done now. He says he won't buy me any more because I was obsessed with this one.

I've been working on compiling our domestic violence statistics, at work, for a community plan intended to address family violence. The research makes for depressing reading, on the whole. I had to plough through a lot of cases, because the statute for assault (sec. 266) includes all kinds of assaults. So in some cases I had to ask around -- a man assaulted a woman but are they partners? Although jealousy seems to be a common flashpoint, most of the reports are also linked to over-consumption of alcohol. And then I found a statistic on the StatsCan site, to the effect that if your partner is a drinker -- that is, drinks five or more drinks at least once a week -- you are SIX times more likely to be a victim of domestic violence.

One thing that surprised me with the cases here is that although some of the women who were assaulted eventually refused to cooperate and no charges were laid (the Crown will not support the police going ahead with charges if there are no co-operative witnesses) all of the men who were assaulted by their partners were co-operative and charges were laid against the women. Granted, more men were still charged than women.

So I don't know if this is just a Nunavut thing? We've got such huge rates of personal victimization in the first place. Statistics are interesting... (really...)

Rachael Ray. In the sink.

I don't know exactly what she's up to. But it kinda looks like fun.