I came across this again today – noted down from the window of the Babushka bookshop on the Isle of White in – was it 2014?

It’s a poem by James Fenton, called The Ideal:

This is where I came from
I passed this way
This should not be shameful
Or hard to say

A self is a self
It is not a screen
A person should respect
What he has been

This is my past
Which I shall not discard
This is the ideal
This is hard