Larkin x 2

Been rereading a bunch of Philip Larkin lately, in observance of National Poetry Month. Here's a poem of his that expresses the same idea mine was trying to, only much better.

Strangers

The eyes of strangers
Are cold as snowdrops,
Downcast, folded,
And seldom visited.

And strangers' acts
Cry but vaguely, drift
Across our attention's
Smoke-sieged afternoons.

And to live there, among strangers,
Calls for teashop behaviours:
Setting down the cup,
Leaving the right tip,

Keeping the soul unjostled,
The pocket unpicked,
The fancies lurid,
And the treasure buried.

And here's one about what my right-hand column playlist is about. This one kills me.

The Spirit Wooed

Once I believed in you,
And then you came,
Unquestionably new, as fame
Had said you were. But that was long ago.

You launched no argument,
Yet I obeyed,
Straightaway, the instrument you played
Distant down sidestreets, keeping different time,

And never questioned what
You fascinate
In me; if good or not, the state
You pressed towards. There was no need to know.

Grave pristine absolutes
Walked in my mind:
So that I was not mute, or blind,
As years before or since. My only crime

Was holding you too dear.
Was that the cause
You daily came less near — a pause
Longer than life, if you decide it so?

- Andrew