How Distant
How Distant - meaning Summary
Youth as Assumed Escape
The poem observes young people leaving home for work or escape, portraying departure as distant, cinematic and mildly romanticized. Larkin links ordinary origins—cattlemen, carpenters, steerage laundry—to private imaginings of travel: ships, stars, music and possibility. Youth is shown as a brief, performative assumption of big choices, compared to new clothes and impulsive streets. The tone mixes wistful distance with recognition of randomness and invented futures.
Read Complete AnalysesHow distant, the departure of young men Down valleys, or watching The green shore past the salt-white cordage Rising and falling. Cattlemen, or carpenters, or keen Simply to get away From married villages before morning, Melodeons play On tiny decks past fraying cliffs of water Or late at night Sweet under the differently-swung stars, When the chance sight Of a girl doing her laundry in the steerage Ramifies endlessly. This is being young, Assumption of the startled century Like new store clothes, The huge decisions printed out by feet Inventing where they tread, The random windows conjuring a street.
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