The eye can hardly pick them out <br />From the cold shade they shelter in, <br />Till wind distresses tail and main; <br />Then one crops grass, and moves about <br />- The other seeming to look on - <br />And stands anonymous again <br /> <br />Yet fifteen years ago, perhaps <br />Two dozen distances surficed <br />To fable them : faint afternoons <br />Of Cups and Stakes and Handicaps, <br />Whereby their names were artificed <br />To inlay faded, classic Junes - <br /> <br />Silks at the start : against the sky <br />Numbers and parasols : outside, <br />Squadrons of empty cars, and heat, <br />And littered grass : then the long cry <br />Hanging unhushed till it subside <br />To stop-press columns on the street. <br /> <br />Do memories plague their ears like flies? <br />They shake their heads. Dusk brims the shadows. <br />Summer by summer all stole away, <br />The starting-gates, the crowd and cries - <br />All but the unmolesting meadows. <br />Almanacked, their names live; they <br /> <br />Have slipped their names, and stand at ease, <br />Or gallop for what must be joy, <br />And not a fieldglass sees them home, <br />Or curious stop-watch prophesies : <br />Only the grooms, and the grooms boy, <br />With bridles in the evening come.<br /><br />Philip Larkin<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/at-grass/
