Philil larkin's poem reference back What is the theme? Wht does the he mean by "sudden bridge", "prime" I

reference back
That was a pretty one I heard you call
From the unsatisfactory hall
to the unsatisfactory room
where I played record after record idly
Wastind my time at home that you
looked so much forward to

Oliver's Riverside Blues it was
And now I shall I suppose always remember how
The flock of notes those antique negroes blew
Our of Chicago air into...[.....]
The year after 谋 was born
Three decades later made this sudden bridge
From your unsatisfactory age
To my unsatisfactory prime

Truly, though our element is time
We're not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives
They link us to our losses: worse,
They show us what we have as it once was,
Blindingly undiminished, just as though
By acting differently we could have kept it so

The theme of this fantastic poem is the onset of time - and how it creates painful mirages on the things we once cherished, which are now only things of the past.

The "long perspectives" are all the memories, happy occasions and instances of youth which Larkin yearns for - they are "open at each instant of our lives" but horribly, they "link us to our losses" - they remind us that we are mortal. We only have 70-80 years on the planet if we're very lucky, and so all of the images and thoughts lost to youth are a vivid reminder of our vulnerability.

They are "blindingly undiminished" - raw, perfect, fresh in our minds - whilst our bodies have aged and withered to oldness. Larkin poses the crucial detente to the poem at the very end; he thinks that memory is a painful conceit, because it leads us to question areas of our past which we may have done better - which would have achieved a happier ending.

The "bridge" is a metaphor for the transience of age, the bridge between youth to middle age to your twilight years. "Prime" means the "prime" of your life, i.e. what people consider middle age.

Larkin's poetry is often riddled with these eloquent and fundamentally horrifying ideas.