Coming • National Poetry Month

Coming



Coming : 


On longer evenings, 

Light, chill and yellow, 

Bathes the serene

Foreheads of houses. 

A thrush sings, 

Laurel-surrounded

In the deep bare garden, 

Its fresh-peeled voice

Astonishing the brickwork. 

It will be spring soon, 

It will be spring soon—

And I, whose childhood

Is a forgotten boredom, 

Feel like a child

Who comes on a scene

Of adult reconciling, 

And can understand nothing

But the unusual laughter, 

And starts to be happy. 



by Philip Larkin
courtesy English for Students

Mother, Summer, I — National Poetry Month

Mother, Summer, I

My mother, who hates thunder storms,
Holds up each summer day and shakes
It out suspiciously, lest swarms
Of grape-dark clouds are lurking there;
But when the August weather breaks
And rains begin, and brittle frost
Sharpens the bird-abandoned air,
Her worried summer look is lost,
And I her son, though summer-born
And summer-loving, none the less
Am easier when the leaves are gone
Too often summer days appear
Emblems of perfect happiness
I can't confront: I must await
A time less bold, less rich, less clear:
An autumn more appropriate.

by Philip Larkin

courtesy All Poetry

In Honor of My Condo, Now For Sale

Home is so Sad   

Home is so sad. It stays as it was left, 

Shaped to the comfort of the last to go 

As if to win them back. Instead, bereft 

Of anyone to please, it withers so, 

Having no heart to put aside the theft  

And turn again to what it started as, 

A joyous shot at how things ought to be, 

Long fallen wide. You can see how it was:  

Look at the pictures and the cutlery. 

The music in the piano stool. That vase.

by Philip Larkin

courtesy poets.org