Poetry Monday: We Met at the End of the Party

An autumnal poem from my favorite poet:

We Met at the End of the Party

We met at the end of the party
When most of the drinks were dead
And all the glasses dirty:
“Have this that’s left,” you said.
We walked through the last of summer,
When shadows reached long and blue
Across days that were growing shorter:
You said: “There’s autumn too.”
Always for you what’s finished
Is nothing, and what survives
Cancels the failed, the famished,
As if we had fresh lives
From that night on, and just living
Could make me unaware
Of June, and the guests arriving,
And I not there.

-- Philip Larkin