Thursday 15 May 2014

When I was a grown up

         When I was a grown  up

 They say I’m a kid at heart
And maybe that is true
But it did not come about
By living through
One long Golden Age of halcyon days
  When I was a grown up
  It wasn’t like that at all,

I first became a grown up
By learning that lots of things are important
More important than the most important things
Which have to be discarded to make room
For the important things
So choosing between the many more important things
And the few most important things
I chose the many –safety in numbers,

When I was a grown up
Everything was serious,
So I didn’t laugh a lot
But did neither did  I weep.
I wasn’t moved to compassion or joy
Life was just serious
For the sake of being serious
That seemed to be important

When I was a grown up
I seem to recall
That my memory was poor;
I forgot the struggles of my youth,
What it was to weep over unattainable virtues
What it was to fall so often
That the ground was my home
And the dust my dinner.

Towards the end of my time as a grown up
I started hearing voices.
It happens to some and sends them mad
But it was the beginning of sanity for me
For they finally convinced me I was mad
And that my life wasn’t working

I saw that in my stifled Britness
And my brittle stiffness
All I did was knock things over
And break things
Other people’s hopes
Other people’s dreams
Break things
Other people

I had to do a lot of turning round
It made me dizzy and sick
And realising that my self made boundaries
Were not real made me afraid
But there were no dragons
On the blank bits of the map
Just me finding new land beginning
To find the thrill of adventure


In another land that was this one
Long ago
Far away
All grown up
All ground down
Everything gone
All ground up
Till everything shone

I never want to be old again
I never want to be young
All I want is to be new
All I want is to be new

                                       WILF 2009-08-10




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