Looking into Motions Larkin
No matter how slowly you read the life
It speeds past. His parents wed. Soon he's born
Then school, and Oxford, a taste for porn
Then jobs, the many women (but no wife)

And the little songs, formal, bright and brief
But briskly playing notes of rue and scorn
And only those, until each tune sounds worn
The man too, instrument of ceaseless grief

Still, when he's buried, you come, another ghost
Among his friends and family, the known
The unacknowledged, wearing your own gown
Of tears, your empty voice raised with the rest
So much lament, for see what he has sown
That only now you gather what you've lost.