The Housewife's Lament

Afternoons, by Philip Larkin

Summer is fading:
The leaves fall in ones and twos
From trees bordering
The new recreation ground.
In the hollows of afternoons
Young mothers assemble
At swing and sandpit
Setting free their children.

Behind them, at intervals,
Stand husbands in skilled trades,
An estateful of washing,
And the albums, lettered
Our Wedding, lying
Near the television:
Before them, the wind
Is ruining their courting-places

That are still courting-places
(But the lovers are all in school),
And their children, so intent on
Finding more unripe acrons,
Expect to be taken home.
Their beauty has thickened.
Something is pushing them
To the side of their own lives.







life in suburbia
a woman's dreams destroyed
clutching at straws

it all comes at a cost
the illusion of security
small deaths each day

"Women writers have been obliged to squeeze their creative lives into the tiny space left after everyone else's needs have been taken care of."

Kathryn Hughes..Daily Telegraph