The Cockney Amorist
Oh when my love, my darling,
You've left me here alone,
I'll walk the streets of London
Which once seemed all our own.
The vast suburban churches
Together we have found:
The ones which smelt of gaslight
The ones in incense drown'd;
I'll use them now for praying in
And not for looking round.
No more the Hackney Empire
Shall find us in its stalls
When on the limelit crooner
The thankful curtain falls,
And soft electric lamplight
Reveals the gilded walls.
I will not go to Finsbury Park
The putting course to see
Nor cross the crowded High Road
To Williamsons' to tea,
For these and all the other things
Were part of you and me.
I love you, oh my darling,
And what I can't make out
Is why since you have left me
I'm somehow still about.
By John Betjeman
The first stanza and four lines of the second are quoted in the song 'Sheila' by Jamie T.
More to the point, it sums up quite how I wish I'd felt at the end of a relationship. It paints a picture of a relationship busy with encounters and vivid memories of times and a place; London.
My own London relationship was not so busy, but there are enough precious memories of late nights prowling Bloomsbury, kicking up the leaves, ripping up the pavement with runs and rushes to keep me wistful.
Somehow, though, the reality of a relationship doesn't quite match up to the poem's enduring drama and the romantic pathos of the final stanza.