POEMS JANUARY 4TH

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WE MET AT THE END OF THE PARTY 

We met at the end of the party
When all the drinks were dead
And all the glasses dirty:
’Have this that’s left’, you said.
We walked through the last of summer,
When shadows reached long and blue
Across days that were growing shorter:
You said: ‘There’s autumn too’.
Always for you what’s finished
Is nothing, and what survives
Cancels the failed, the famished,
As if we had fresh lives
From that night on, and just living
Could make me unaware
Of June, and the guests arriving,
And I not there.



Morning at Last: There in the Snow

Morning at Last : There in the Snow 
Your small blunt footprints come and go.
Night has left no more to show,

Not the candle, the half-drunk wine,
Or touching joy; only this sign
Of your life walking into mine.

But when they vanish with the rain
What morning woke to will remain
Whether as happiness or pain.



Phillip Larkin



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