From Phyllis McGinley’s Stones from a Glass House.

Landscape Without Figures

The shape of the summer has not changed at all.
 There is no difference in the sky’s rich color,
In texture of cloud or leaf or languid hill.
 The fringed wave is no duller.

Even the look of this village does not change —
 Shady and full of gardens and near the sea.
But something is lacking. Something sad and strange
 Troubles the memory.

Where are they? — the boys, not children and not men,
 In polo shirts or jeans or autographed blazers,
With voices suddenly deep, and proud on each chin
 The mark of new razors.

They were workers or players, but always the town was theirs.
 They wiped your windshield, they manned the parking lots.
They delivered your groceries. They drove incredible cars
 As if they were chariots.

They were lifeguards, self-conscious, with little whistles.
 They owned the tennis courts and the Saturday dances.
They were barbarous-dark with sun. They were vain of their muscles
 And the girls’ glances.

They boasted, and swam, and lounged at the drugstore’s portal.
 They sailed their boats and carried new records down.
They never took thought but that they were immortal,
 And neither did the town.

But now they are gone like leaves, like leaves in the fall,
Though the shape of the summer has not changed at all.