Mean Time & Afternoons

• 2. Both Larkin and Duffy use their poems to explore their ‘fascination of time’ and its cyclical nature, how it provides us with opportunities but also destroys them. While Duffy focuses on the raw and cruel emotion, Larkin presents the effects of time as a more natural process and its universal nature.
• "stole light from my life” -MT
• “the clocks slid back an hour” - MT
• “albums, lettered Our wedding lying” - A
• "summer is fading” - A
• A03 - “The clocks slid back an hour and stole light from my life”.

  Duffy has a known past of broken relationships. Duffy perhaps is blaming time being cruel for taking away these symbols of joy reflecting how time will take away but never give back.
• A05 - “Summer is fading”

  More convincing when considering how influenced Larkin was by these Romantics.