Cut Grass

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.

Philip Larkin (1922–1985)

Earlier this week I read that the English city of Hull will for the rest of the year be displaying excerpts of poems by Philip Larkin, who lived in Hull for 30 years prior to his death in 1985, on public buses as part of a celebration of his life and works on the 25th anniversary of his passing. Looking back through my archives, I was surprised to see I'd never featured a poem by Larkin here, and resolved to do something about it.