The poetry of ‘Ambulances’

The visible face of this virus, for most of us, is the ambulances. All else that we see – empty streets, spaced out queues, face masks, rainbows in windows – is secondary. Only the ambulances tell of the disease itself. They are the eerily siren-less blue flashing tips of the iceberg.

So I am surprised that Philip Larkin’s poem ‘Ambulances’ has not, as far as I know, been identified as the text of the moment. I suppose it’s bleaker than one might like – uplifting poems are generally preferred at such a time. In fact I saw that another Larkin poem, ‘The Mower’ has been placed on a list of poems to help us through the crisis, due to its concluding exhortation to be kind to each other ’while there is still time’. Nothing wrong with such a sentiment, but it’s not particularly timely (unless you happen to have killed a hedgehog while on gardening leave).