Remember the day when the sun shone
on fragrant grass and you
thought it could never end,

this lasting summer Sunday when
school was far into the future and
that pain of giving up yourself

to rules and tables and the smell
of polish and cabbage in the
long hard corridors.

There was hope of something
in your mind but it never came
until you left that dead environment.

And from then till now you have made
music for a few, a few more
and then faceless millions,

and you never knew what that meant
until you stood in front of them and
bowed to their appreciation.

Now you can write like you thought
when you were young but never
could because a finger came

into your head and turned the words
round and upside down and
inside out and… and… until

music was all that you had to
really tell others what you thought
in that time of freedom from

school when you could practise
and walk and compose and
be a person, so you found

that child that you lost all those
summer Sundays ago and you
held on to him tight so he

plays still in the warm fragrant grass.