Philip Larkin. Mr Bleaney.

'This was Mr Bleaney's room. He stayedThe whole time he was at the Bodies, tillThey moved him.' Flowered curtains, thin and frayed,Fall to within five inches of the sill,Whose window shows a strip of building land,Tussocky, littered. 'Mr Bleaney tookMy bit of garden properly in hand.'Bed, upright chair, sixty-watt bulb, no hookBehind the door, no room for books or bags --'I'll take it.' So it happens that I lieWhere Mr Bleaney lay, and stub my fagsOn the same saucer-souvenir, and tryStuffing my ears with cotton-wool, to drownThe jabbering set he egged her on to buy.I know his habits -- what time he came down,His preference for sauce to gravy, whyHe kept on plugging at the four aways --Likewise their yearly frame: the Frinton folkWho put him up for summer holidays,And Christmas at his sister's house in Stoke.But if he stood and watched the frigid windTousling the clouds, lay on the fusty bedTelling himself that this was home, and grinned,And shivered, without shaking off the dreadThat how we live measures our own nature,And at his age having no more to showThan one hired box should make him pretty sureHe warranted no better, I don't know.