Most things will not happen: this one will.

I love the poetry of Philip Larkin, and have been re-reading his Aubade, one of the last poems he wrote towards the end of his life. Larkin's gift for poetry had left him, which caused him great distress, but it reappeared for this extraordinarily honest poem. Alan Bennett remembers this as the last time that a new poem was news. I will write it out below. It deserves to be read in all its glory.

Aubade

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.

Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.

In time the curtain-edges will grow light.

Till then I see what's really always there:

Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,

Making all thought impossible but how

And where and when I shall myself die.

Arid interrogation: yet the dread

Of dying, and being dead,

Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse

_ the good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused - nor wretchedly because. An only life can take so long to climb

Clear of its wrong beginnings, and may never;

But at the total emptiness for ever,

The sure extinction that we travel to

And shall be lost in always. Not to be here,

Not to be anywhere,

And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.

This is a special way of being afraid

No trick dispels. Religion used to try,

That vast moth-eaten musical brocade

Created to pretend we never die,

And specious stuff that says No rational being

Can fear a thing it will not feel, not seeing

That this is what we fear - no sight, no sound,

No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with,

Nothing to love or link with,

The anaesthetic from which none come round.

And so it stays just to the side of vision,

A small unlicensed blur, a standing chill

That slows each impulse down to indecision.

Most things may never happen: this one will,

And realisation of it rages out

In furnace-fear when we are caught without

People or drink. Courage is no good:

It means not scaring others. Being brave

Lets no one off the grave

Death is no different whined at than withstood.

Slowly light strengthens. and the room takes shape.

It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know,

Have always known, known that we can't escape,

Yes can't accept. One side will have to go.

Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring

In locked-up offices, and all the uncaring

Intricate rented world beings to rouse.

The sky is white as clay, with no sun. Work has to be done

Postmen like doctors go from house to house.

There is no hope in Larkin's reading of our impending death. There is 'nothing more terrible, nothing more true'. For Larkin, there is nothing to be done about it. Nothing we do matters.

This is where I would disagree with Larkin. I agree that death is inevitable, and the way we view it changes nothing. But, the thought of my death does not, as for Larkin, bring me to despair and hopelessness. It makes me value the life that I do have for as long as I have it. With death in mind, it makes me want to write the poems I feel that I never have time for; to meet up to play music with others; to go and see that Vermeer or Rembrandt painting that's difficult to get to; to spend time with my friends and my family; to continue with my therapeutic work with others, which I love and brings great meaning to my life. Essentially, to do all the things that the admin of life takes me away from.

Action, not inaction is my response to death. In the introduction to George Saunders' great collection of short stories, Tenth of December, his friend Joel Lovell talks about Saunders being on a plane which nearly crashed and reported Saunders saying this:

'For three or four days after that... it was the most beautiful world. To have gotten back in it, you know? And I thought, If you could walk around like that all the time, to really have that awareness that it's actually going to end. That's the trick'.

Lowell describes this desire as 'to really have that awareness, to be open as possible, all the time, to beauty and cruelty and stupid human falibility and unexpected grace'.

This is what we can take from looking death in the face: to be as open as possible, all the time. If someone is reading this, and is reminded of something that they wish they could do if only they had the time, I would gently suggest that this time, right now, is the time to do it.