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Looking Back With the Hand Break Off
Being older than I once was, inevitably places have changed,
yet where I was born now looks like an alien city to me,
it’s now a tourist destination for the ever rootless.
Back then people were dangerous yet much kinder.
Now here in my corner of no-place-much, faces
float in and out speaking a language that means less to me
the more I hear it.
We once carried books around, we loaded cars and pushbikes
with travel books and the poetry of adventurers.
We once dared to be piratical.
Of course the young were always dumb, and the more educated
they got the dumber we all got. The old have
always talked like this, our handbrakes are looser,
thoughts slip backwards downhill, yet we must speak
occasionally about the puerile encroachments
the cheapening of what was once hard won.
The land I now inhabit gave me a passport, and an address.
I recognize sometimes who I was and where I went,
however only in antiquarian maps once crossed.
Maybe I am too young to forget, it will probably get
better as I age. Besides vapid banality
tends to grow on you bit by bit.
Copyright ©
Eric Ashford
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