POEMS

• Afternoons by Philip Larkin


  Place :

  Trees bordering the new recreation ground.

  An estate full of washing.

  There are still courting places.

  Time passage :

  Leaves fall in ones and twos.

  Wind is ruining their courting places.

  Their beauty has thickened.

  Romance :

  Behind them , at intervals , stand husbands.

  The albums lettered our wedding, lying.

  Something is pushing them to the side of their own lives.
• The soldier by Rupert Brook


  Conflict :

  If I should die think only this of me.

  A richer dust concealed.

  At peace under an English heaven.
• Manhunt by Simon Armitage


  Conflict :

  Frozen river which ran through his face.

  The damaged porcelain.

  Unexploded mine buried deep inside his mind.

  Time passage :

  after passionate nights and intimate days.

  Only then could I bind the struts and climb the rungs.

  Only then did I come close.

  Romance :

  After passionate nights and intimate days.

  Feel the hurt of his grazed heart.

  Only then did I come close.
• The prelude by William Wordsworth


  Place :

  The cottage windows through the twilight.

  Hiss’d along the polish’d ice.

  The orange sky of evening died away.
• She walks in beauty by Lord Byron


  Romance :

  All that‘s best of dark and bright.

  So soft , so calm , yet eloquent.

  A mind at peace with all below.