I well remember what it was to be
On the outside of what I was inside,
An office where the competences tried
Were not those which came naturally to me.
I had no notion of the fantasy
Entertained by the colleagues at my side:
I had my own—a solitary pride
Which drew me to the well of poetry.
Now old, I wander still and lack the light
Others can see by; nearly but not quite
Is still what others read as my device
Which either, blind, I cannot read at all,
Or, for a moment, dazzles and I fall
Outside the in or through the slippery ice.
—C. H. Sisson