Sad Steps

Readers new to Larkin may be startled by the vulgarity of the word “piss” in the first line of “Sad Steps,” but Larkin often used colloquial or vulgar expressions in his poetry. He also used the word “fuck,” which had more power to shock when he included it in two poems in High Windows in 1974 than it does in 2022. In terms of words that express bodily functions, the poem “A Study of Reading Habits” might be thought of in the same context as “Sad Steps.” Both poems contrast youth with middle age, to the disadvantage of the latter. In “A Study of Reading Habits,” the speaker tells of how he loved reading when he was young, but now he is older (Larkin was in his late thirties when he wrote it in 1960) books—like the moon in “Sad Steps”—no longer give him the same thrill. The poem ends, “Books are a load of crap.”

This kind of change for the worse in middle age is quite typical of Larkin’s poetry. If disillusionment is too strong a word—to be disillusioned about the possibility of leading a full and happy life one has to have believed in it in the first place—many of his poems express sadness, disappointment, pessimism, loneliness, or other negative emotions. These convey the notion that one cannot expect much from life—particularly as one ages. In terms of possibilities, life contracts as people age. In “Annus Mirabilis,” the sexual revolution of the 1960s came too late for the speaker to enjoy it. “This Be the Verse” describes how parents pass on their own deficiencies to their children, and from that emerges a general truth: “Man hands on misery to man. / It deepens like a coastal shelf.” In “The View,” the first-person speaker is 50 years old, “overweight and shifty” as well as “unchilded and unwifed” (Larkin was a lifelong bachelor); he has little to which to look forward and death is not far off. In “Talking in Bed,” a couple lie together in bed but are unable to communicate anything meaningful to each other. For the woman who is the subject of “Love Songs in Age,” love was not enough to satisfy all her longings when she was young and certainly cannot do so now, much later in life.

In terms of “Sad Steps,” however, Larkin’s pessimism is not the entire story. Interestingly, in High Windows, Larkin placed a poem titled “Solar” immediately after “Sad Steps.” In theme and mood, it is a very different poem. Unlike with the moon in “Sad Steps,” the poet has no desire to amend or undermine how the sun has been or is viewed by poets nor anyone else. This short poem reads as an unironic tribute to that fiery cosmic body, referring to its “lion face,” which pours out its life-giving warmth while asking for nothing back: “Unclosing like a hand, / You give forever.”

Another poem, “The Moon Is Full Tonight,” is interesting in the context of “Sad Steps” because Larkin wrote it in 1943 or 1944, when he was in his early 20s. When contrasted with “Sad Steps,” it shows how Larkin’s thoughts changed as he aged. In the earlier poem, the moon is so full and bright that the speaker speculates it might have drawn “all quietness and certitude of worth” into itself in order to “mint a second moon, a paradise?–,” for those qualities are no longer found on earth. At this early point in his career, Larkin had not yet developed his own unique style, but the poem is interesting because of the romantic and visionary picture it presents of the moon. This is not the moon of “Sad Steps,” considered 25 years later.