'I listen to money singing'

 On this day in 1973, Philip Larkin's mind was on money, that most concrete of abstractions. He wrote, or completed to his satisfaction, this poem, which was published in the collection High Windows. The last stanza is beautiful, I think...

Money

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:

    ‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?

I am all you never had of goods and sex.

    You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:   

    They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.

By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:

    Clearly money has something to do with life

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:

    You can’t put off being young until you retire,

And however you bank your screw, the money you save

    Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down

    From long french windows at a provincial town,   

The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad

    In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.