Sad Steps BY PHILIP LARKIN

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, "Sad Steps" from Collected Poems. Copyright © Estate of Philip Larkin.  Reprinted by permission of Faber and Faber, Ltd.

Source: Collected Poems (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2001)