Obedient daily dress, <br />You cannot always keep <br />That unfakable young surface. <br />You must learn your lines - <br />Anger, amusement, sleep; <br />Those few forbidding signs <br /> <br />Of the continuous coarse <br />Sand-laden wind, time; <br />You must thicken, work loose <br />Into an old bag <br />Carrying a soiled name. <br />Parch then; be roughened; sag; <br /> <br />And pardon me, that <br />I Could find, when you were new, <br />No brash festivity <br />To wear you at, such as <br />Clothes are entitled to <br />Till the fashion changes.<br /><br />Philip Larkin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/skin/
