Lost Larkin poem.

And Yet

And yet — but after death there’s no ‘and yet’.
Now we have seen you die; and had you burned,
I cannot aphorise ‘what I have learned’
As neatly as I sought your desk, and set
The calendar for days you will not see.
‘Death doesn’t do you harm,’ you chanced to say
One morning on the lawn, and straightway
Fear, young and furtive, took its roots in me
Which in these empty days now comes of age. And yet — because in life there is ‘and yet’
What can I hope, except that you were right?