Talking in Bed

Talking in bed ought to be easiest,                                   (it isn't as easy)

Lying together there goes back so far,                              (intimacy)
An emblem of two people being honest.             (paradox- two people lying cant become honest)

 Yet more and more time passes silently.            (no communication. lonely)
Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest                ( un-comfy)
Builds and disperses clouds in the sky,              (clouds covering the truth)

 And dark towns heap up on the horizon.          ( cant escape/ no freedom- nothing to look forward to.)
None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why
At this unique distance from isolation               (lonely, isolation)

 It becomes still more difficult to find
Words at once true and kind,                                            (hard to find things to talk about)
Or not untrue and not unkind             (absence in intimacy, never be honest- hurts someone's feelings)

 

Larkin uses pathetic fallacy to show the relationship, in the 2nd stanza, the wind's unrest may show a stormy, dull weather showing a problem. This poem shows the pessimism in relationships and human nature and how people supposedly act. It also comes across as anti-women as you have to be careful what you say to them encase you make them upset but in reality they aren't necessarily weak.