Wants
Wants - context Summary
Published in 1955
Published in Larkin’s 1955 collection The Less Deceived, "Wants" reflects the poet’s early postwar voice: spare, ironic, and focused on solitude and mortality. In two parallel tercets it contrasts social obligations and domestic rituals with an underlying, persistent craving for isolation and oblivion. The poem frames personal withdrawal as a constant beneath public life, fitting themes that recur across Larkin’s midcentury work.
Read Complete AnalysesBeyond all this, the wish to be alone: However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards However we follow the printed directions of sex However the family is photographed under the flag-staff - Beyond all this, the wish to be alone. Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes from death - Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs.
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