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Essential Beauty

In frames as large as rooms that face all

And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,

Screen graves with custard, cover slums with

Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon,

Perpetually these sharply-pictured

Of how life should be.

High above the gutterA silver knife sinks into golden butter,

A glass of milk stands in a meadow,

Well-balanced families, in

Midsummer weather, owe their smiles, their cars,

Even their youth, to that small cube each

Stretches towards.

These, and the deep

Aligned to cups at bedtime, radiant bars(Gas or electric), quarter-profile

By slippers on warm mats,

Reflect none of the rained-on streets and

They dominate outdoors.

Rather, they

Serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam,

Pure coldness to our live imperfect

That stare beyond this world, where nothing's

As new or washed quite clean, seeking the

All such inhabit.

There, dark raftered

Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,

And the boy puking his heart out in the

Just missed them, as the pensioner paidA halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes'

To taste old age, and dying smokers

Walking towards them through some dappled

As if on water that unfocused

No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,

Who now stands newly clear,

Smiling, and recognising, and going dark.

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Philip Larkin

Philip Arthur Larkin (9 August 1922 – 2 December 1985) was an English poet, novelist, and librarian. His first book of poetry, The North Ship, w…

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