'Sad Steps' by Philip Larkin

 Sad Steps

 

Groping back to bed after a piss

I part thick curtains, and am startled by

The rapid clouds, the moon’s cleanliness.

 

Four O’clock: wedge-shadowed gardens lie

Under a cavernous, a wind-picked sky.

There’s something laughable about this,

 

The way the moon dashes through clouds that blow

Loosely as cannon-smoke to stand apart

(Stone-coloured light sharpening the roofs below)

 

High and preposterous and separate –

Lozenge of love! Medallion of art!

O wolves of memory! Immensements! No,

 

One shivers slightly, looking up there.

The hardness and the brightness and the plain

Far-reaching singleness of that wide stare

 

Is a reminder of the strength and pain

Of being young; that it can’t come again,

But is for others undiminished somewhere.

Philip Larkin

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