This poem by Phillip Larkin was added to this site after reading student sestinas about furniture. One student wrote about having to move a wardrobe during a New York City heatwave. Another student wrote about the risks of working for a company making furniture. This poem by Philip Larkin is different. It’s about a home or apartment that served a family and is abandoned when the last person dies. (I’m excited to see future drafts of the student poems mentioned above).
https://poets.org/poem/home-so-sad
Home is so Sad
CONTENTS
by Phillip Larkin
Home is so sad. It stays as it was left,
Shaped to the comfort of the last to go
As if to win them back. Instead, bereft
Of anyone to please, it withers so,
Having no heart to put aside the theft
And turn again to what it started as,
A joyous shot at how things ought to be,
Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:
Look at the pictures and the cutlery.
The music in the piano stool. That vase.
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