I love the young because they have no baggage,
Only vague inklings of the trauma of their birth,
Of squeezing down the narrow stairs,
And sucking on the teat and pissing warm,
Of feelings faintly recollected and the strange
Slow mystery of dawn.

By learning how to please
The voices, soft or low
By slow degrees they tuned
Themselves to need and sang survival's song.
Excitement grew annually by default.
Experience exploded and
Burrowed and wormed its way into
All the empty cabins of the brain.

Knowingly now, they pad across the floor.
'It's comprehensible,' they cry,
'We're getting to know the giants' names.
The place, the face, the chair to climb,
The hand to hold, the pain to bear.
Imitation is the way to go.'
Then as a blunt reed carves the soft clay
Permanency arrived in all its inky clothes
As they begin to pile the baggage on the cart.
'We love you child, only follow this rule
Remember that the world is cruel.
You'll learn a great deal more at school. '
'Be kind Sir. Don't hit me please.
I'm small and very shy.
Just pass me by.'

Hair grew where it hadn't.

Change became permanent.
Baggage grew in depth and weight and filled the cart
Until the limits had been reached
And then and then the slow decline.
Mystery and wonder shrank
Became the norm.
Change was of a different form
And irreversibly came with pain.

Artifice and learning, two muddy scarecrows,
Shook their ragged clothes.
The grave beckoned
Then all the precious baggage was let go.
And everything we know
Was lost or tossed
Perhaps picked over at another time.

The baggage like a refuse tip
Waited for the sorters.