What will survive of us is love

This from “The Larkin puzzle,” a new essay from Martin Amis:

Then, too, there are the lines that everyone knows and everyone automatically memorises. “They fuck you up, your mum and dad”, “Sexual intercourse began/In nineteen sixty-three”, “Never such innocence again”, “And age, and then the only end of age”, “What will survive of us is love”. This is a voice that is part of our language.

My taste for poetry is limited, strangled by a succession of ambivalent teachers and a curriculum that can only be described as moribund. Shabby and unimaginative teaching can be crippling. Had even one pedagogue, eyes flashing, introduced me to Larkin’s “Annus Mirabilis” everything would have been alright. Alas, it was not to be. But rather than get lost picking at the scab that is our education system, I would rather spend my time emphasizing — indeed, overemphasizing — the simple fact that all is not lost. Poetry need not be abstruse, obfuscating, alienating. It is, at the most basic level, part of our language. Larkin understood this, and that is why his poetry is such a joy to read.

Amis also points out Larkin’s contempt for anyone willing to lead “a life / Reprehensibly perfect”. The idea is simple: only the work matters. This is an intriguing idea, and not just because it runs counter to our love of invasion, of voyeurism, of vicarious living. Larkin’s intuition, perhaps unsurprisingly, also happens to be correct.