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 realise the folly of these unripe years.

Now I am a man, I realise
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.