Ambulances

Closed like confessionals, they thread
Loud noons of cities, giving back
None of the glances they absorb.
Light glossy grey, arms on a plaque,
They come to rest at any kerb:
All streets in time are visited.

Then children strewn on steps or road,
Or women coming from the shops
Past smells of different dinners, see
A wild white face that overtops
Red stretcher-blankets momently
As it is carried in and stowed,

And sense the solving emptiness
That lies just under all we do,
And for a second get it whole,
So permanent and blank and true.
The fastened doors recede. Poor soul,
They whisper at their own distress;

For borne away in deadened air
May go the sudden shut of loss
Round something nearly at an end,
And what cohered in it across
The years, the unique random blend
Of families and fashions, there

At last begin to loosen. Far
From the exchange of love to lie
Unreachable insided a room
The trafic parts to let go by
Brings closer what is left to come,
And dulls to distance all we are

Content
An expression of the inevitability of death, something that Larkin is very afraid of, the Ambulance becomes a symbol of that which Larkin feels the ordinary person fails to remember when not in the face of death. 'The traffic of life will part and let the dead move through', nothing more.

Analysis
As the ambulance 'dulls to the distance' so too does any thought of approaching death in the people, as each stanza shows a disintegration of care. The regular stanzas and ABCBCA rhyme scheme is a metaphor for the whole message, that death is ever present- we are on a constant journey of life to death, yet Larkin explicitly uses the Ambulance to express the fact that we ignore this in the chaos of everyday life, this works in conjunction with the grave tone of the iambic pentameter and the 'threading' movement of the vehicle, weaving in and out of an ordinary city perhaps reflecting an idea that is represents the key stitching to life. The very real and ordinary city setting for such an alarming event puts Larkin's exploration of it 'stopping at every kerb' and 'visiting every street' into reality before us.

The 'strewn' about characters in this poem are key, their ordinary lives of shopping and cooking dinner, the italic of 'poor soul' highlights a lack of care which Larkin goes on to explain is at their 'own distress' perhaps indicating our little attention of death until we are faced with it. For that minute only, we try to 'solve the emptiness' that death is, the 'comfortless blank that it is'- reflected in the 'white face' too complex to put into language, before the idea 'dulls to the distance' and we revert back to normal life. As the 'fastened doors recede' lives end as well as care for the victim that has been stripped of identity to 'it'.

This poem can be seen as a metaphor asking us to take more notice of deaths omniscient presence that 'lies under all we do', a prospect that haunted Larkin for most of his life.