Love Again
Love Again - meaning Summary
Jealousy Turned Inward
Larkin’s poem presents a late-night, bitter monologue of a man awake and imagining an ex-partner with someone else. He alternates crude sexual fantasy, wounded jealousy, and ironic self-dismissal, then shifts to a quieter attempt to name why love failed for him. The closing lines suggest deep-rooted causes—past violence, misapplied rewards, and an overreaching sense of eternity—linking personal loss to broader psychological and moral problems.
Read Complete AnalysesLove again: wanking at ten past three (Surely he's taken her home by now?), The bedroom hot as a bakery, The drink gone dead, without showing how To meet tomorrow, and afterwards, And the usual pain, like dysentery. Someone else feeling her breasts and cunt, Someone else drowned in that lash-wide stare, And me supposed to be ignorant, Or find it funny, or not to care, Even ... but why put it into words? Isolate rather this element That spreads through other lives like a tree And sways them on in a sort of sense And say why it never worked for me. Something to do with violence A long way back, and wrong rewards, And arrogant eternity.
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