Afternoons
Afternoons - meaning Summary
Domestic Lives in Decline
Larkin observes a suburban scene where summer and youthful freedom are waning. Young mothers gather with children at a recreation ground while men linger, home tasks and domestic artifacts like albums and washing marking settled routines. Courting places remain, but lovers are at school and romance has given way to duty. The poem registers a quiet, pervasive feeling of lives narrowed and beauty diminished as ordinary responsibilities press in.
Read Complete AnalysesSummer is fading: The leaves fall in ones and twos From trees bordering The new recreation ground. In the hollows of afternoons Young mothers assemble At swing and sandpit Setting free their children. Behind them, at intervals, Stand husbands in skilled trades, An estateful of washing, And the albums, lettered Our Wedding, lying Near the television: Before them, the wind Is ruining their courting-places That are still courting-places (But the lovers are all in school), And their children, so intent on Finding more unripe acorns, Expect to be taken home. Their beauty has thickened. Something is pushing them To the side of their own lives.
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