The Shell.

Living grows round us like a skin
to shut away the outer desolation.
For if we clearly marked the furthest deep
we should be dead long years before the grave.
But turning around within the homely shell
of worry, discontent, and narrow joy,
we grow and flourish and rarely see
the outside dark that would confound our eyes.

Some break the shell.
I think that there are those who push their
fingers through the brittle walls and
make a hole...and through this cruel slit
stare out across the cinders of the world.
With naked eyes they look both out and in,
knowing themselves, and too much else beside.

Molly Drake, mother of Nick,
Tanworth-in-Arden, 1960s