The past is always with us

Running rest-day ... and also a very busy day at work, so late-evening choice of poem today!

The pictured volume (Out of Danger) is James Fenton's 1993 collection ... and The Ideal is - without question - my favourite poem within it:


The Ideal

This is where I came from.
I passed this way.
This should not be shameful
Or hard to say.

A self is a self.
It is not a screen.
A person should respect
What he has been.

This is my past
Which I shall not discard.
This is the ideal.
This is hard.


I love the searing honesty that, for most of us, every detail of the past and retaining/attaining our 'ideal' are always hard.