Essential Beauty

In frames as large as rooms that face all ways

And block the ends of streets with giant loaves,

Screen graves with custard, cover slums with praise

Of motor-oil and cuts of salmon, shine

Perpetually these sharply-pictured groves

Of how life should be. High above the gutter

A silver knife sinks into golden butter,

A glass of milk stands in a meadow, and

Well-balanced families, in fine

Midsummer weather, owe their smiles, their cars,

Even their youth, to that small cube each hand

Stretches towards. These, and the deep armchairs

Aligned to cups at bedtime, radiant bars

(Gas or electric), quarter-profile cats

By slippers on warm mats,

Reflect none of the rained-on streets and squares

They dominate outdoors. Rather, they rise

Serenely to proclaim pure crust, pure foam,

Pure coldness to our live imperfect eyes

That stare beyond this world, where nothing's made

As new or washed quite clean, seeking the home

All such inhabit. There, dark raftered pubs

Are filled with white-clothed ones from tennis-clubs,

And the boy puking his heart out in the Gents

Just missed them, as the pensioner paid

A halfpenny more for Granny Graveclothes' Tea

To taste old age, and dying smokers sense

Walking towards them through some dappled park

As if on water that unfocused she

No match lit up, nor drag ever brought near,

Who now stands newly clear,

Smiling, and recognising, and going dark.