Beyond the light stand failure and ...

Beyond the light stand failure and remorse

- Philip Larkin, High Windows

The snow-man infants from the nursery denomination devised from the first fall of January stares back from a far comer of the square - a selfish giant made to be congealed and rule the garden as if self-generated there, his abstract mien and bleak bituminous eye proclaiming a different order of reality from the bright children who gave rise to him. When they move there to play at mid-morning their primary colours have the appearance to prefigure spring, the deliquescence of each rigorous thing; on the other hand the ex-child at the window