More work?

Last week, Larkin's Toads (1954) in a very negative, oppressive view of work; today, another poem by the same man, explicitly revisiting the earlier work almost a decade later, and presenting a much more harmonious, fulfilling view of work - but one from the empty spaces of life after work, with a killing final line.  This is Philip Larkin's Toads Revisited:

Walking around in the park
Should feel better than work:
The lake, the sunshine,
The grass to lie on,

Blurred playground noises
Beyond black-stockinged nurses -
Not a bad place to be.
Yet it doesn't suit me,

Being one of the men
You meet of an afternoon:
Palsied old step-takers,
Hare-eyed clerks with the jitters,

Waxed-fleshed out-patients
Still vague from accidents,
And characters in long coats
Deep in the litter-baskets -

All dodging the toad work
By being stupid or weak.
Think of being them!
Hearing the hours chime,

Watching the bread delivered,
The sun by clouds covered,
The children going home;
Think of being them,

Turning over their failures
By some bed of lobelias,
Nowhere to go but indoors,
No friends but empty chairs -

No, give me my in-tray,
My loaf-haired secretary,
My shall-I-keep-the-call-in-Sir:
What else can I answer,

When the lights come on at four
At the end of another year?
Give me your arm, old toad;
Help me down Cemetery Road.

Comments

[Mr Cornflower]

I find myself in the interesting position of being on 'garden leave'; for the uninitiated, this is when you resign from company A in order to join company B, but company A makes you serve out your (paid) notice at home in order to keep you away from a workplace to which you can make no real positive contribution, as much of the work is confidential and ongoing.
So this puts me in an unusual position, one whose irony I like to think Larkin would have appreciated. I can, at company A's expense, read the complete works of Trollope, improve my golf, go fishing, and even, as it is garden leave, remodel my garden. Perhaps it should be seen as another way of befriending the toad.