To My Wife

Portrait of Philip Larkin
Philip Larkin 1922–1985

Choice of you shuts up that peacock-fan The future was, in which temptingly spread All that elaborative nature can. Matchless potential! but unlimited Only so long as I elected nothing; Simply to choose stopped all ways up but one, And sent the tease-birds from the bushes flapping. No future now. I and you now, alone.

So for your face I have exchanged all faces, For your few properties bargained the brisk Baggage, the mask-and-magic-man's regalia. Now you become my boredom and my failure, Another way of suffering, a risk, A heavier-than-air hypostasis.

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