days

Days
Philip Larkin

What are days for?
Days are where we live.
They come, they wake us
Time and time over.
They are happy to be in:
Where can we live but days?

Ah, solving that question
Brings the priest and the doctor
In their long coats
Running over the fields.

Philip Larkin's "Days" discusses the existence of both life and death, treating life with innocence and naivety while treating death with cynicism and morbidity. In addition, the poem makes comments concerning the matters of religion and science associated with death.

The poem begins with a question: "What are days for?" This question resembles a question asked by a child, and so the response resembles a question given to a child; However, if the poem were to be read through an existentialist lens, the narrator could be questioning the reason for life. Without delving too deep into the search for the meaning of life, the response answers that days are where we live. The description of days as being a "where" rather than a "when" provides the idea that days are not a time but a place. This implies a much more permanent state rather than "when," since time passes by while places remain existent.

With the statement that the days "come," the days are portrayed as existing to serve us rather than us to serve the days. Their purpose is to wake the individuals "time and time over," as if their duty and the days are never-ending. This implies the idea that living is endless as the days continue on and on. As the days are said to "wake us" again and again, it's as if the days are permanent. This is ironic as life is known for its brevity due to death, and the suggestion that the days come "time and time over" illustrate the response as an attempt to retain innocence through rejecting the idea of death.

It's suggested that the days are "happy to be in," though it doesn't describe the happiness obtained through living in the days. In addition, this implies that the days are always happy and never upsetting, another indication that the narrator is attempting to maintain innocence and naivety. Along with this lack of description for happiness, the description provided for the days is itself scarce and not very detailed, leaving everything as vague and innocent. However, by the second verse, the tone shifts from pleasant to negative.

The verse ends with another question: "Where can we live but days?" Although it appears to be a rhetorical question, the narrator provides a cynical response to that answer, commenting that it's not only days in which one can live. The poet claims that the other place to live would bring the "priest and doctor," implying a connection to religion and health to the other living place. Religion and health can be both be tied to death; while religion provides a belief in the afterlife, health indicates the decay of the body after death. 

With their "long coats," the priest and doctor resemble ghosts, casting an almost sinister feeling by the last verse. Their "running over the fields" could be of haste towards a dying individual, perhaps hoping to provide religion to him to ease his mind of death or to provide treatment to him to prolong his life.