King Lear, second-hand
   (we two alone will sing like birds i’th’cage)
          out of old mythologies


On a creaking table, from better days,
thinking on OS maps, and picture frames,
I lay down here this old, foxed coat
like something off the peg of Philip Larkin
as he looked out from a high, attic window,
as if through the hushed breadth of a library,
over London Road, and Clarendon Park,
and, no longer singing further off,
all the dead birds of Leicestershire.