Sweet, Ordinary Earth

I thought it would last my time -
The sense that, beyond the town,
There would always be fields and farms,
Where the village louts could climb
Such trees as were not cut down;
I knew there'd be false alarms

In the papers about old streets
And split level shopping, but some
Have always been left so far;
And when the old part retreats
As the bleak high-risers come
We can always escape in the car.

Things are tougher than we are, just
As earth will always respond
However we mess it about;
Chuck filth in the sea, if you must:
The tides will be clean beyond.
- But what do I feel now? Doubt?

Or age, simply? The crowd
Is young in the M1 cafe;
Their kids are screaming for more -
More houses, more parking allowed,
More caravan sites, more pay.
On the Business Page, a score

Of spectacled grins approve
Some takeover bid that entails
Five per cent profit (and tenPer cent more in the estuaries): move
Your works to the unspoilt dales
(Grey area grants)!
And when

You try to get near the sea
In summer . . . It seems, just now,
To be happening so very fast;
Despite all the land left free
For the first time I feel somehow
That it isn't going to last,

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts -
First slum of Europe: a role
It won't be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There'll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

Most things are never meant.
This won't be, most likely; but greeds
And garbage are too thick-strewn
To be swept up now, or invent
Excuses that make them all needs.
I just think it will happen, soon.
---Larkin.

Some think England is 'going' because of the immigrants but it was going long before that! Cemented over by capitalism and a cheap sentimentalism, her customary expectations worked out of the land by the machine, always dreaming of other shores, warmer climes; all that remains now is an England of the mind. Already, she was "gone" when we sat enraptured by the reflected lights at Blackpool rather than the stars, when we mistook the surge of the sea for our inner turmoil. Yes, they will sing Jerusalem but the eyes will not have the strength to match the voice and all around the grey monotony seeps.

We, we latecomers, must look for beauty in the trash heaps, light the fires from whatever material we lay our hands on, seek the extraordinary in the ordinary...but our heart isn't in it. Go west, escape from this claustrophobic cynicism, this smallness of spirit, this dullness of mind. The allure of the exotic for an island race, the beckoning of the wild west: unchartered, unscripted...to be in Paradise alone.

"It offers simple documentary proof of Maxim Gorky's belief that "Life will always be bad enough for the desire for something better not to be extinguished in men."

There is something distinctly Russian about progress being negatively affirmed in this way. An American version would reverse the emphasis: however good life is it will never be so good that people stop wanting something better. Implicit in the foundation myth of America, the utopian impulse is etched into the country's history and geography. On hearing of the lure of California, one of the Polish emigrants in Susan Sontag's In America points out how American it is, the idea "that America has its America, its better destination where everyone dreams of going". Often this ambition operates simply at the level of endlessly mobilising consumer demand. An alternative expression of the same impulse explicitly rejects - or, in the testaments of Emerson and Thoreau, seeks to transcend - a version of satisfaction which generates insatiability. The other key part of the American estate, pragmatism, has sought to make the utopian yearning tangible, not through revolutionary overthrow of the existing order (as advocated by Marx and Engels) but by establishing small "communities of common purpose". Some of these have survived into the era of triumphal capitalism that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union."

---Geoff Dyer, The Guardian.