Sad Steps BY PHILIP LARKIN

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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)

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