Church Going
By Philip Larkin
Once I am sure there's nothing going on
I step inside, letting the door thud shut.
Another church: matting, seats, and stone,
And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cut
For Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuff
Up at the holy end; the small neat organ;
And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,
Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take off
My cycle-clips in awkward reverence.
Move forward, run my hand around the font.
From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -
Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.
Mounting the lectern, I peruse a few
Hectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce
'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.
The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the door
I sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,
Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.
Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,
And always end much at a loss like this,
Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,
When churches fall completely out of use
What we shall turn them into, if we shall keep
A few cathedrals chronically on show,
Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,
And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.
Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?
Or, after dark, will dubious women come
To make their children touch a particular stone;
Pick simples for a cancer; or on some
Advised night see walking a dead one?
Power of some sort will go on
In games, in riddles, seemingly at random;
But superstition, like belief, must die,
And what remains when disbelief has gone?
Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,
A shape less recognisable each week,
A purpose more obscure. I wonder who
Will be the last, the very last, to seek
This place for what it was; one of the crew
That tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?
Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,
Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiff
Of gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?
Or will he be my representative,
Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly silt
Dispersed, yet tending to this cross of ground
Through suburb scrub because it held unspilt
So long and equably what since is found
Only in separation - marriage, and birth,
And death, and thoughts of these - for which was built
This special shell? For, though I've no idea
What this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,
It pleases me to stand in silence here;
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious,
And gravitating with it to this ground,
Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,
If only that so many dead lie round.
This is the third poem that we have discussed. We are in the process of discussing it, since I just passed out the hard copy to mom and dad, and we only briefly talked about some of my difficulties with poetry. One of my stumbling blocks is that if I don't understand a word, I can't move on, I get stuck and afraid. When I divulged this to Dad he said, "Christine, just read the poem, don't worry about each individual word." Hmmm, this does not quite sit right with me, since how do I know whether that word is important if I don't know what it means, and if the meaning of that word is not important, why have it in the poem in the first place? But, in essence, Pipaw was telling me to relax and just enjoy the language and get what you can out of it, and absorb the essence. I am still skeptical, but here goes:
ReplyDeleteBig picture: he walks into a church and feels all the not-on-Sunday church feelings...the brown flowers, "some brass and stuff" up at the "holy end" (clearly he does not belong at the holy end), the tense silence, the awkward reference. He is scornful of the church, calling the verses hectoring, and donating only a 6 pence, reflecting that the church was not worth stopping for. But yet he did stop, and he often stops, but always ends at a loss. Is he seeking religion with the urge that humans have for religion, but cannot quite find it? He reverts again to scorn, calling certain beliefs "superstition." He thinks that churches stay alive not only with belief but also with disbelief, and when that is gone, only the physical parts of churches remain (grass, weedy pavement etc). Then he wonders who will be the last person to seek this place for what it was... someone who understands all of the accouterments of the church, or someone who doesn't understand these, yet knows that the church brought together what we only find now in separation? But then he comes around, and likes the silence. It is a place where the vicissitudes of humanity are shrouded as something important and explainable.
This comment is from Julie Stotlar:
ReplyDeleteI love love love it. I love how the poet comes into the church with this mixture of dismissive intellectual arrogance and childlike awe and adolescent sheepishness. Those emotions that define us and that flash through us in an instant Realization that the symbolism that surrounds him has been there much longer than he has, and his petulance that it couldn't last much longer and if it did how would it look really and who buys into this stuff any way and oh I better take off my cleats.
I too was a bit mystified by his turnaround, but then decided that perhaps he (or she) was more ambivalent about than we are supposed to think at the beginning. The narrator finds this church not worth stopping for, but at the same time we learn that he stops at many of them, presumably always taking off his hat and cleats out of respect. He mounts to the lectern, he says a few words. These are not the actions of someone who hates religion. And by the end, he says he is in "a serious house on serious earth."
ReplyDeleteThe odder thing to me is his prediction of the total end of Christianity, that there will come a time when no one will know what a church is. Even if that's a fanciful reference, it also sets him apart from those future people. He knows what a church should look like, he knows to say "Here endeth." So maybe he is more of a Christian, or at least an admirer of churches, than he wants us to think.
I put my best thoughts in a reply to a long comment by Julie and now I can't find it, but I remember asking about these lines:
ReplyDelete"In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies." Here's the immediate context:
A serious house on serious earth it is,
In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,
Are recognized, and robed as destinies.
And that much never can be obsolete,
Since someone will forever be surprising
A hunger in himself to be more serious.
How does that happen in a church? Which of us churchgoers can tell the others just what, in a church service, accomplishes this?
I *think* this may mean that religion and churchgoing is meant to explain all human compulsions, and explain them as something important ("destinies"), and this will never go away. Humans will always be examining these parts of themselves, and it will seem so serious that an organized religion needs to address it. A church service consolidates these hungers that arise over and over again, using allegories to explain them, and perhaps giving churchgoers perspective.
ReplyDelete