Philip Larkin

Down stucco sidestreets,
Where light is
And afternoon
Brings lights on in

At last you yielded up the album,
Once open, sent me distracted
All your
Matt and glossy on the thick black pages

Marrying left your maiden name disused
Its five light sounds no longer mean your face,
Your voice, and all your variants of grace;
For since you were so thankfully

Come to Sunny
Laughed the girl on the poster,
Kneeling up on the
In tautened white satin

Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the
Mown stalks exhale
Long, long the

Love, we must part now: do not let it be Calamitious and bitter
In the past There has been too much moonlight and self-pity:
Let us have done with it: for now at last Never has sun more boldly paced the sky,
Never were hearts more e...

Always too eager for the future,
Pick up bad habits of expectancy
Something is always approaching; every
Till then we say,

Lambs that learn to walk in
When their bleating clouds the
Meet a vast unwelcome,
Nothing but a sunless glare

'Dockery was junior to you,
Wasn't he
' said the Dean
'His son's here now

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

That Whitsun,
I was late getting away:
Not till
One-twenty on the sunlit

What do they think has happened, the old fools,
To make them like this
Do they somehow
It's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and drools,