Myself:
When I was young, I looked out of my window.
There, in the gloom partitioned by the glass
Was light. It trembled in the jumping motes
Of static falling from the sky.
It seemed apparent only to my eye.
When I grew older, I made patterns.
Dragons, knights. I took comfort
From their honour and their kindness,
Raised them from the baseness of creation.
I gave them hope and gleaming decoration.
Still older and I laughed to read the stories
Made by others. The world still seemed new
And gleaming with the potential of its birth.
All that I saw was good, for it was fiction.
I lived in worlds of others' diction.
Now, when I look out of the window
All I see is greyness, tightened eyes
Strain through the murk and see chimneys,
Money is the new principle
And I, unwilling, its disciple.
And because I've been reading up on G.K. Chesterton:
The Rolling English Road
Before the Roman came to Rye or out to Severn strode,
The rolling English drunkard made the rolling English road.
A reeling road, a rolling road, that rambles round the shire,
And after him the parson ran, the sexton and the squire;
A merry road, a mazy road, and such as we did tread
The night we went to Birmingham by way of Beachy Head.
I knew no harm of Bonaparte and plenty of the Squire,
And for to fight the Frenchman I did not much desire;
But I did bash their baggonets because they came arrayed
To straighten out the crooked road an English drunkard made,
Where you and I went down the lane with ale-mugs in our hands,
The night we went to Glastonbury by way of Goodwin Sands.
His sins they were forgiven him; or why do flowers run
Behind him; and the hedges all strengthening in the sun?
The wild thing went from left to right and knew not which was which,
But the wild rose was above him when they found him in the ditch.
God pardon us, nor harden us; we did not see so clear
The night we went to Bannockburn by way of Brighton Pier.
My friends, we will not go again or ape an ancient rage,
Or stretch the folly of our youth to be the shame of age,
But walk with clearer eyes and ears this path that wandereth,
And see undrugged in evening light the decent inn of death;
For there is good news yet to hear and fine things to be seen,
Before we go to Paradise by way of Kensal Green.
Edit: Actually, I'll say something of what the poem inspired in me. It made me think of the M1 and all the chocking lanes of traffic into London, the endless stream of commerce. I cannot help but think that we would be happier to go slower and perhaps lose a bit of money, but gain the ability to wend and enjoy life.
I think if everyone wanted a rolling, drunk-seeming road it would be a better place. Chesterton applies this concept to life; me, to living.