Absences
Absences - meaning Summary
Empty Shore, Inward Absence
Larkin's poem uses an energetic, indifferent sea and a vast, wind-riddled day to register personal absence. The natural world is in restless motion—waves rising, collapsing, shuffling—while the speaker feels excluded, as if inner rooms or attics have been cleared of them. The closing image names this erasure: absence is not mourned in drama but observed as a quiet removal, a solitude made visible against relentless external movement.
Read Complete AnalysesRain patters on a sea that tilts and sighs. Fast-running floors, collapsing into hollows, Tower suddenly, spray-haired. Contrariwise, A wave drops like a wall: another follows, Wilting and scrambling, tirelessly at play Where there are no ships and no shallows. Above the sea, the yet more shoreless day, Riddled by wind, trails lit-up galleries: They shift to giant ribbing, sift away. Such attics cleared of me! Such absences!
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