Slowly the women file to where he stands
Upright in rimless glasses, silver hair,
Dark suit, white collar. Stewards tirelessly
Persuade them onwards to his voice and hands,
Within whose warm spring rain of loving care
Each dwells some twenty seconds. Now, dear child,
What’s wrong, the deep American voice demands,
And, scarcely pausing, goes into a prayer
Directing God about this eye, that knee.
Their heads are clasped abruptly; then, exiled
Like losing thoughts, they go in silence; some
Sheepishly stray, not back into their lives
Just yet; but some stay stiff, twitching and loud
With deep hoarse tears, as if a kind of dumb
And idiot child within them still survives
To re-awake at kindness, thinking a voice
At last calls them alone, that hands have come
To lift and lighten; and such joy arrives
Their thick tongues blort, their eyes squeeze grief, a crowd
Of huge unheard answers jam and rejoice –
What’s wrong! Moustached in flowered frocks they shake:
By now, all’s wrong. In everyone there sleeps
A sense of life lived according to love.
To some it means the difference they could make
By loving others, but across most it sweeps
As all they might have done had they been loved.
That nothing cures. An immense slackening ache,
As when, thawing, the rigid landscape weeps,
Spreads slowly through them; that, and the voice above
Saying Dear child, and all time has disproved.
End of the poem
15 random poems
- In Imitation of Chaucer poem – Alexander Pope poems | Poetry Monster
- Lines Written On Visiting The Chateaux On The Loire poem – Alfred Austin
- Yarrow Revisited by William Wordsworth
- Pathos Is The Skyward Tanka
- Scribbles by Suchi Gaur
- Dyer Died In Silence poem – Andrea “Vocab” Sanderson poems | Poems and Poetry
- Light The Festive Candles
- Владимир Набоков – Кубы
- Look Now On That Adventurer Who Hath Paid by William Wordsworth
- With No Experience In Such Matters by Stephen Dunn
- Elixer Vitæ poem – Ambrose Bierce poems | Poems and Poetry
- Physically Hearted
- Passion Of My Heart by Stevens Cadet
- Владимир Корнилов – Эпоха
- Иван Варавва – Соловей на веточке
Some external links:
Duckduckgo.com – the alternative in the US
Quant.com – a search engine from France, and also an alternative, at least for Europe
Yandex – the Russian search engine (it’s probably the best search engine for image searches).

Philip Arthur Larkin (1922-1985), Commander of the Order of the British Empire, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, Cavalier of the Order of the Companions of Honour, was an English poet, novelist, and librarian.