Reference Back

Analysis of Reference Back by Philip Larkin

- Get the feeling he doesn't want to be with his mother; in separate rooms, shouting to each other across the house, wasting his time.

"Three decades later made this sudden bridge/ From your unsatisfactory age/ To my unsatisfactory prime."

- Bridge - musical term - literally made a reference. He's in the prime time of life but is still no happier than his old mother. Can we ever be truly satisfied?

"They link us to our losses: worse,/ They show us what we have as it once was,/ Blindingly undiminished, just as though/ By acting differently we could have kept it so"

- Music - reminds you of what you've lost and what could have been, we shouldn't have long memories because remembering is too painful.

- Similar to 'Love Songs In Age' - unsatisfied with life.