Lest we omit, from the pulse of our lives
The primality of a noiseless warmth,
Awake against a skin as sallow as the city
And its lifeless lines and cloisters.

Lest we see always with seamless clarity
The governance of chaos' chimes,
In unravelling the little knots of midday light
Tied about our youthful eyelashes.

Lest we lament our blindnesses,
In relentless pursuit of space and time,
Lest we forget those very intimacies
Which lace our shoes as the roots of trees.

And in the ache of prestige which loosens the cobbles
Lest we neglect the ache of being in the air;
Above the weeping of the bookish bends there is
The residue of the primal silence.

And so let us misremember the freedoms children know,
And ambling, intrepid as we came, like lovers' hands
Fall upon a truth discovered long since,
To realise it's our own.