This is submitted by an anonymous contributor. I am pleased to comply. Indeed I promise to print any offering from this erudite reader!

 

A dear friend, the last of the convivial, trusting folk who lived as the poem recommends, has recently moved into sheltered accommodation where doors – by definition – cannot be left on the latch. Truly the end of an era.

 

 

The Road

 

"Because our lives are cowardly and sly,

Because we do not dare to take or give,

Because we scowl and pass each other by,

We do not live; we do not dare to live.

 

We dive, each man, into his secret house,

And bolt the door, and listen with affright,

Each timid man beside a timid spouse,

With timid children huddled out of sight.

 

Kissing in secret, fighting secretly!

We crawl and hide like vermin in a hole,

Under bravery of sun and sky

We flash our meanness of face and soul.

 

Let us go and walk upon the road,

And quit for evermore the brick-built den

The lock and key, the hidden, shy abode

That separates us from our fellow men.

 

And by contagion of the sun we may

Catch at a spark from that primeval fire,

And learn that we are better than our clay

And equal to the peaks of our desire."

 

James Stephens