“Whose white shelves and domes travel
The slow sky all day.”
In stanza 2, lines 5 and 6, the reader is provided with an aural image,
“Find voices coined to
An argot of motor-horns,”
There is an allusion in stanza 3, line 5.
“Its milk-aired Eden.”
Here, Eden is the place where Adam and Eve lived before the Fall. The poet also uses similes in stanza 2, line 3
“Shovel-faces like pennies”
and in stanza 1 line 7,
“And the curtains fly out like doves”.
Just as pennies are of low value and a bad penny refers to an undesirable person, the people in this world are now undesirable and insignificant to the poet. Doves symbolize peace and tranquility. In the new city, the poet’s niche therefore boasts of this tranquility that the dove possesses. Metaphors have also been experimented with in the poem; such as ‘wide-branched indifference’ in stanza 1 line 2. A wide branch offers shelter to those lying under it from the excessive light and provides a soothing feeling. Similarly this indifference seems to comfort the poet.
Arrival, the title of the poem, literally signifies the arrival of the poet in a new city in the morning. It could also signify the poet’s arrival into a world of seclusion and solitude, the arrival into a new phase of his life. As he opens the window of this new place, the wind enables the curtains to fly and old memories are forgotten. This phase of his life seems to be slow, serene but majestic. The serenity is expressed with the use of words like ‘white shelves’, ‘slow sky’ and ‘doves’. The royalty and majestic feeling is given by the use of words like ‘gold names’ and ‘domes’. His decision to stay in the new city there is clear with the affirmative line in stanza 1, line 5,
“I land to stay here”.
The new city provides a novel atmosphere in which the past is forgotten.
The primary theme of isolation is expressed in the second stanza.
“Now let me lie down, under
A wide-branched indifference.”
The poet reveals indifference towards people by comparing their faces like pennies. He pushes them down in his mind, where they occupy no significance. The voice of motor-horns and the earthly materialist items also hold no true value. It is an argot or a group holding relevance only to those people submerged in a world of materialism. He has gone past that phase of life.
“And let the cluttered-up houses
Keep their thick lives to themselves.”
The poet is devoid of concern for the society and neighborhoods. He feels they are thick-skinned I.e. insensitive.
In the last stanza the poet takes delight in this ignorance. His life seems child-like and innocent once he is detached from all earthly things. This stanza seems to describe the proverb ‘Ignorance is bliss’.
“For this ignorance of me
Seems a kind of innocence.”
The poet is nearing the end of his life. This is expressed clearly in the last stanza.
“Fast enough I shall wound it,”
In stanza 3, line 3 and in the same stanza line 8, the poem states
“A style of dying only.”
This conveys that the poet wishes to spend the last few years in isolation. He wishes to enjoy the beauty of seclusion that he calls Eden, a garden which exudes perfect bliss and happiness. He desires to continue with this until he succumbs to mortality just as the Fall of Adam and Eve after they left Eden. This is the perfect style of dying according to Philip Larkin. He describes it to be ‘slow-falling; grey-veil-hung; a theft,’ this life enables a death that falls slowly and gradually, a veil protecting it from the outside world. A theft is performed secretly and stealthily. Similarly this death stealthily takes hold of you.
Arrival seems to be a reflection portraying the poet’s thoughts. He makes use of figurative dialect to create a binding sensation onto the reader and let him experience what the poet is feeling. It describes the thoughts that go through the mind of the poet at one particular instance of his life, wherein he has chosen to isolate himself from the world. The poet feels that the style of dying is that of living with detachment. He realizes this at the autumn phases of his life in which he migrate to a new phase that shall justify his belief. Serenity is sought after once one enters this phase and all things of materialistic value take a set-back.
Jinal Sanghavi