“Those long uneven linesStanding as patientlyAs if they were stretched outsideThe Oval or Villa Park,The crowns of hats, the sunOn moustached archaic facesGrinning as if it were allAn August Bank Holiday lark;And the shut shops, the bleachedEstablished names on the sunblinds,The farthings and sovereigns,And dark-clothed children at playCalled after kings and queens,The tin advertisementsFor cocoa and twist, and the pubsWide open all day--And the countryside not caring:The place names all hazed overWith flowering grasses, and fieldsShadowing Domesday linesUnder wheat's restless silence;The differently-dressed servantsWith tiny rooms in huge houses,The dust behind limousines;Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriages,Lasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.- MCMXIV”

“Never such innocence,Never before or since,As changed itself to pastWithout a word--the menLeaving the gardens tidy,The thousands of marriagesLasting a little while longer:Never such innocence again.”

“Once I am sure there's nothing going onI step inside, letting the door thud shut.Another church: matting, seats, and stone,And little books; sprawlings of flowers, cutFor Sunday, brownish now; some brass and stuffUp at the holy end; the small neat organ;And a tense, musty, unignorable silence,Brewed God knows how long. Hatless, I take offMy cycle-clips in awkward reverence.Move forward, run my hand around the font.From where I stand, the roof looks almost new -Cleaned, or restored? Someone would know: I don't.Mounting the lectern, I peruse a fewHectoring large-scale verses, and pronounce'Here endeth' much more loudly than I'd meant.The echoes snigger briefly. Back at the doorI sign the book, donate an Irish sixpence,Reflect the place was not worth stopping for.Yet stop I did: in fact I often do,And always end much at a loss like this,Wondering what to look for; wondering, too,When churches will fall completely out of useWhat we shall turn them into, if we shall keepA few cathedrals chronically on show,Their parchment, plate and pyx in locked cases,And let the rest rent-free to rain and sheep.Shall we avoid them as unlucky places?Or, after dark, will dubious women comeTo make their children touch a particular stone;Pick simples for a cancer; or on someAdvised night see walking a dead one?Power of some sort will go onIn games, in riddles, seemingly at random;But superstition, like belief, must die,And what remains when disbelief has gone?Grass, weedy pavement, brambles, buttress, sky,A shape less recognisable each week,A purpose more obscure. I wonder whoWill be the last, the very last, to seekThis place for what it was; one of the crewThat tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were?Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique,Or Christmas-addict, counting on a whiffOf gown-and-bands and organ-pipes and myrrh?Or will he be my representative,Bored, uninformed, knowing the ghostly siltDispersed, yet tending to this cross of groundThrough suburb scrub because it held unspiltSo long and equably what since is foundOnly in separation - marriage, and birth,And death, and thoughts of these - for which was builtThis special shell? For, though I've no ideaWhat this accoutred frowsty barn is worth,It pleases me to stand in silence here;A serious house on serious earth it is,In whose blent air all our compulsions meet,Are recognized, and robed as destinies.And that much never can be obsolete,Since someone will forever be surprisingA hunger in himself to be more serious,And gravitating with it to this ground,Which, he once heard, was proper to grow wise in,If only that so many dead lie round.”

“What do they think has happened, the old fools,To make them like this ? Do they somehow supposeIt's more grown-up when your mouth hangs open and droolsAnd you keep on pissing yourself, and can't rememberWho called this morning ? Or that, if they only chose,They could alter things back to when they danced all night,Or went to their wedding, or sloped arms some September ?Or do they fancy there's really been no change, And they've always behaved as if they were crippled or tight,Or sat through days of thin continuous dreamingWatching light move ? If they don't (and they can't), it's strange:Why aren't they screaming ?At death, you break up: the bits that were youStart speeding away from each other for everWith no one to see. It's only oblivion, true: We had it before, but then it was going to end,And was all the time merging with a unique endeavourTo bring to bloom the million-petalled flowerOf being here. Next time you can't pretendThere'll be anything else. And these are the first signs:Not knowing how, not hearing who, the powerOf choosing gone. Their looks show that they're for it:Ash hair, toad hands, prune face dried into lines-How can they ignore it ?Perhaps being old is having lighted roomsInside your head, and people in them, acting.People you know, yet can't quite name; each loomsLike a deep loss restored, from known doors turning, Setting down a Iamp, smiling from a stair, extractingA known book from the shelves; or sometimes onlyThe rooms themselves, chairs and a fire burning,The blown bush at the window, or the sun' sFaint friendliness on the wall some lonelyRain-ceased midsummer evening. That is where they live:Not here and now, but where all happened once.This is why they giveAn air of baffled absence, trying to be thereYet being here. For the rooms grow farther, leavingIncompetent cold, the constant wear and tearOf taken breath, and them crouching belowExtinction' s alp, the old fools, never perceivingHow near it is. This must be what keeps them quiet.The peak that stays in view wherever we goFor them is rising ground. Can they never tellWhat is dragging them back, and how it will end ? Not at night?Not when the strangers come ? Never, throughoutThe whole hideous inverted childhood? Well,We shall find out.- The Old Fools”

“AubadeI work all day, and get half-drunk at night. Waking at four to soundless dark, I stare. In time the curtain-edges will grow light. Till then I see what’s really always there: Unresting death, a whole day nearer now, Making all thought impossible but how And where and when I shall myself die. Arid interrogation: yet the dreadOf dying, and being dead,Flashes afresh to hold and horrify.The mind blanks at the glare. Not in remorse —The good not done, the love not given, time Torn off unused—nor wretchedly because An only life can take so long to climbClear of its wrong beginnings, and may never; But at the total emptiness for ever,The sure extinction that we travel toAnd shall be lost in always. Not to be here, Not to be anywhere,And soon; nothing more terrible, nothing more true.This is a special way of being afraidNo trick dispels. Religion used to try,That vast moth-eaten musical brocadeCreated to pretend we never die,And specious stuff that says No rational beingCan fear a thing it will not feel, not seeingThat this is what we fear—no sight, no sound, No touch or taste or smell, nothing to think with, Nothing to love or link with,The anaesthetic from which none come round.And so it stays just on the edge of vision, A small unfocused blur, a standing chill That slows each impulse down to indecision. Most things may never happen: this one will, And realisation of it rages outIn furnace-fear when we are caught without People or drink. Courage is no good:It means not scaring others. Being brave Lets no one off the grave.Death is no different whined at than withstood.Slowly light strengthens, and the room takes shape. It stands plain as a wardrobe, what we know, Have always known, know that we can’t escape, Yet can’t accept. One side will have to go.Meanwhile telephones crouch, getting ready to ring In locked-up offices, and all the uncaringIntricate rented world begins to rouse.The sky is white as clay, with no sun.Work has to be done.Postmen like doctors go from house to house.”

“Only one ship is seeking us, a black- Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back A huge and birdless silence. In her wake No waters breed or break.”

“Always too eager for the future, wePick up bad habits of expectancy.Something is always approaching; every dayTill then we say,Watching from a bluff the tiny, clear,Sparkling armada of promises draw near.How slow they are! And how much time they waste,Refusing to make haste!Yet still they leave us holding wretched stalksOf disappointment, for, though nothing balksEach big approach, leaning with brasswork prinked,Each rope distinct,Flagged, and the figurehead with golden titsArching our way, it never anchors; it'sNo sooner present than it turns to past.Right to the lastWe think each one will heave to and unloadAll good into our lives, all we are owedFor waiting so devoutly and so long.But we are wrong:Only one ship is seeking us, a black-Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her backA huge and birdless silence. In her wakeNo waters breed or break.- Next, Please”