Experience [*]

Once I was a boy, an innocent to life and my role in it, This world played my game, and anyone a clown or foil for myself. The harmless affairs, and no-one seemed to care for any meaning My life was my own, The debt I paid, I paid it only to myself. The unseeing youth, how can it be so shallow and short-sighted These years passed me by, to realize the folly of these unripe years. Now I am a man, I realize My unworldly sins pained many lives Yet I heard, heard with ears that wouldn't listen And still I watched and I saw with blinkered eyes. But with age the conscience slowly dawns and bonds of duty gently tied All my sins, seen through now there is experience and recollecting act in virgin guise. Master inner voices, making the choices. Once I could rebel and consequences then had no reflection And I am a man, And I am bound by adult age discretion now.