Sometimes in your later

years it is enough

to read the titles only.

shorthand for the contents

you cannot quite recall.

The sleety ironies

of Philip Larkin, say,

a flatness everybody

knows but he defined,

bending to his bike-clips.
Wallace Stevens, Hartford,

was maestro of the lot;

his titles in themselves

an instant, one-line poem:

‘The Emperor of Ice-Cream’

‘Le Monocle de Mon Oncle’,

Good titles are the flag

that flies without a pole.

They say their piece alone

and straighten in the wind.