High Windows

When I see a couple of kids / And guess he’s fucking her and she’s / Taking pills or wearing a diaphragm, / I know this is paradise // Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives — / Bonds and gestures pushed to one side / Like an outdated combine harvester, / And everyone young going down the long slide // To happiness, endlessly. I wonder if / Anyone looked at me, forty years back, / And thought, That’ll be the life; / No God any more, or sweating in the dark // About hell and that, or having to hide / What you think of the priest. He / And his lot will all go down the long slide / Like free bloody birds. And immediately // Rather than words comes the thought of high windows: / The sun-comprehending glass, / And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows / Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.