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