The widest prairies have electric fences
For though old cattle know they must not stray
Young steers are always scenting purer water
Not here but anywhere. Beyond the wires
Leads them to blunder up against the wires
Whose muscle-shredding violence gives no quarter
Young steers become old cattle from that day
Electric limits to their widest fences
April is National Poetry Month and every day the peaceCENTER will be posting a poem about walls, fences, edges, borders. . . you get the idea. Walls that separate us, protect us, define us, challenge us . . . we collected these poems for our Walls Symposium in 2009.
Philip Larkin (1922 – 1985) was an English poet, novelist and librarian. “Wires” was first published in The Spectator in 1953.
