Talking in bed

• A01: "talking in bed ought to be the easiest"

  • verb 'ought' shows both obligation and uncertainty - intimacy should feel liberating, an expectation.~
  • poem begins with assertion but statement is weakened by the modal verb 'ought/should' implying it isn't easy at all.
  • bed as a place of rawness and vulnerability, close and physical affection, closeness and intimacy - lacks in all of these factors
  • domestic image, emblematic of law, intimate and real communication - expectation due to universality makes it the more devastating
• A02: "outside, the winds incomplete unrest"

  • poem suggests that relationships languish. A couples extreme closeness can distance them from other people, eroding their happiness overtime.
  • 'outside' adverbial detachment, represent Larkins detachment from the relationship. Thomas hardy similarly uses personification in his poetry to reflect a mood
  • sources of tension in their relationship. A restless - but incompletely restless - wind blows clouds here and there, perhaps symbolising speakers own ambivalent restless.