Talking in Bed, Larkin

Talking in Bed
 Talking in Bed is a short poem demonstrating the decay of love in a relationship of many years, making it harder as time goes on for the couple to "find words at once true and kind."
 The poem highlights Larkin's outlook on, not so much the negativity of love, but the negative things being in love brings with it, and his view that nothing is eternal. His focus on the fact that they are alone and cannot communicate proposes that he feels this should be the easiest time for them to be together, without awkwardness, but in each other's company. Talking in Bed immediately enters with the line "Talking in bed ought to be easiest," straight away informing the reader that the poem has a dull undertone, and that the relationship is comfortable.
 Larkin writes "Lying together there goes back so far," allowing lying to have two underlying meanings which could connote both sleeping next to one another or lies told to one another over a long period of time. In the latter's case, he suggests that even in the days where they would speak of kindness to one another and enjoy each other's company, there would still be lies told in order to with-hold their relationship.
 Instead of there being a relationship built upon years and years of knowing each other, learning and travelling and being together, there's simply an "emblem of two people being honest," meaning that them sharing the same bed acts as a facade of their true feelings for one another. It seems almost ironic that they'd share a bed together, Larkin writes about the other person so disconnectedly it almost feels as though they are strangers, "two people" sharing a bed because that's what expected of them from the "dark towns."
 There's also a sense of disconnectedness from the city, and a longing to be there. He describes the "winds unrest" as though it's building up to a storm, symbolising their inner feelings building up eventually exploding and causing a huge break up.
 The town is described as "heaping on the horizon," making any feeling of security in numbers further away than comfortable for Larkin and the person sharing a bed with him, and only adding to the numbing sense of isolation he feels, almost as though their bed acts as a trap, a lonely room with only the two of them in there.
 Talking in Bed is structured to 4 stanzas, following an ABA CAC DCD formatting, only breaking it in the last stanza where it becomes EEE, showing a lack on continuity in their relationship, and closing the poem with a sense of definity and ease, symbolising an end in their relationship and their words becoming "not untrue and not unkind."