When the Queen shook hands with Bobby Moore,

He wiped his in awkward reverence,

(Just in the way that Larkin reacted

By taking off his cycle clips in Church).

Such acts of unrehearsed respect,

Like the embarrassing curtsies

And those tongue-tied conversations,

May be the closest that we come,

Quite unwittingly, to sampling

A world of habits which endures

As years and ...

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