Philip Larkin meets This American Life

Over at The Hairpin, This American Life producer Jane Feltes muses on the new Lars von Trier movie and death -- something she fears intensely:

So intensely that it literally wakes me up in the middle of the night and I bolt upright, cling to the sheets, and think/scream "OH-PLEASE-NO! IT CANNOT BE! I DON'T WANT TO BE DONE! I LIKE IT HERE!!!" I'm not alone, it turns out. This happens to others and I found some of them and made a radio story about it once. At the end, Ira Glass reads a poem.

Which poem? Aubade by Philip Larkin, of course -- poet laureate of remorse, despair, and existential doubt. A few lines:

I work all day, and get half-drunk at night.
Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare.
In time the curtain-edges will grow light.
Till then I see what’s really always there:
Unresting death, a whole day nearer now,
Making all thought impossible but how
And where and when I shall myself die.
Arid interrogation: yet the dread
Of dying, and being dead,
Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.

Read the whole poem here or click through to hear it read by Ira Glass.