Cut grass lies frail:
Brief is the breath
Mown stalks exhale.
Long, long the death

It dies in the white hours
Of young-leafed June
With chestnut flowers,
With hedges snowlike strewn,

White lilac bowed,
Lost lanes of Queen Anne's lace,
And that high-builded cloud
Moving at summer's pace.

2.   Dublinesque

Down stucco sidestreets, Where light is pewter And afternoon mist Brings lights on in shops Above race-guides and rosaries, A funeral passes. The hearse is ahead, But after there follows A troop of streetwalkers In wide flowered hats, Leg-of-mutton sleeves, And ankle-length dresses. There is an air of great friendliness, As if they were honouring One they were fond of; Some caper a few steps, Skirts held skilfully (Someone claps time), And of great sadness also. As they wend away A voice is heard singing Of Kitty, or Katy, As if the name meant once All love, all beauty. 3.  Continuing to Live     Continuing to live -- that is, repeat A habit formed to get necessaries -- Is nearly always losing, or going without. It varies. This loss of interest, hair, and enterprise -- Ah, if the game were poker, yes, You might discard them, draw a full house! But it's chess. And once you have walked the length of your mind, what You command is clear as a lading-list. Anything else must not, for you, be thought To exist. And what's the profit? Only that, in time, We half-identify the blind impress All our behavings bear, may trace it home. But to confess, On that green evening when our death begins, Just what it was, is hardly satisfying, Since it applied only to one man once, And that one dying. 4. Story     Tired of a landscape known too well when young: The deliberate shallow hills, the boring birds Flying past rocks; tired of remembering The village children and their naughty words, He abandoned his small holding and went South, Recognised at once his wished-for lie In the inhabitants' attractive mouth, The church beside the marsh, the hot blue sky. Settled. And in this mirage lived his dreams, The friendly bully, saint, or lovely chum According to his moods. Yet he at times Would think about his village, and would wonder If the children and the rocks were still the same. But he forgot all this as he grew older. 5. Talking In Bed     Talking in bed ought to be easiest, Lying together there goes back so far, An emblem of two people being honest. Yet more and more time passes silently. Outside, the wind's incomplete unrest Builds and disperses clouds in the sky, And dark towns heap up on the horizon. None of this cares for us. Nothing shows why At this unique distance from isolation It becomes still more difficult to find Words at once true and kind, Or not untrue and not unkind. 6. The School in August     The cloakroom pegs are empty now, And locked the classroom door, The hollow desks are lined with dust, And slow across the floor A sunbeam creeps between the chairs Till the sun shines no more. Who did their hair before this glass? Who scratched 'Elaine loves Jill' One drowsy summer sewing-class With scissors on the sill? Who practised this piano Whose notes are now so still? Ah, notices are taken down, And scorebooks stowed away, And seniors grow tomorrow From the juniors today, And even swimming groups can fade, Games mistresses turn grey.   7. The Little Lives of Earth and Form     The little lives of earth and form, Of finding food, and keeping warm, Are not like ours, and yet A kinship lingers nonetheless: We hanker for the homeliness Of den, and hole, and set. And this identity we feel - Perhaps not right, perhaps not real - Will link us constantly; I see the rock, the clay, the chalk, The flattened grass, the swaying stalk, And it is you I see.   8. The Mower     The mower stalled, twice; kneeling, I found A hedgehog jammed up against the blades, Killed. It had been in the long grass. I had seen it before, and even fed it, once. Now I had mauled its unobtrusive world Unmendably. Burial was no help: Next morning I got up and it did not. The first day after a death, the new absence Is always the same; we should be careful Of each other, we should be kind While there is still time. 9. Wants     Beyond all this, the wish to be alone: However the sky grows dark with invitation-cards However we follow the printed directions of sex However the family is photographed under the flag-staff - Beyond all this, the wish to be alone. Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs: Despite the artful tensions of the calendar, The life insurance, the tabled fertility rites, The costly aversion of the eyes away from death - Beneath it all, the desire for oblivion runs.