Summer is fading:
 The leaves fall in ones and twos
 From trees bordering
 The new recreation ground.
 In the hollows of afternoons
 Young mothers assemble
 At swing and sandpit
 Setting free their children.

 Behind them, at intervals,
 Stand husbands in skilled trades,
 An estateful of washing,
 And the albums, lettered
 Our Wedding, lying
 Near the television:
 Before them, the wind
 Is ruining their courting-places

 That are still courting-places
 (But the lovers are all in school),
 And their children, so intent on
 Finding more unripe acorns,
 Expect to be taken home.
 Their beauty has thickened.
 Something is pushing them
 To the side of their own lives.