Committed to PEOPLE'S RIGHT TO KNOW Vol. 5 Num 1039 Sat. May 05, 2007       Literature Twenty Years On Twenty years on I visited teenage haunts Amazed, appalled How same it was, the place How different they seemed, the people British public transport Reliable and ruddy as ever Kissing couples on tube escalators And double-decker back seats Never gave it a thought then T-shirts and tattoos with "Love Forever" Were okay, even cool Now I kept thinking, transient adorations And in public too, silly fools! Trees still as beautiful, paths still as curved Then nature walks sparked dreams and plans Now they left me pensive, wanting more Angry, resentful of parks and playgrounds Even fresh air that I couldn't take back To a choked city elsewhere Senior citizens in coffee shops, still delicate Quaint and amiable as then When I had smiled, chatted and soon forgotten Now I viewed frailty with terrified eyes Cut and paste dream visions of My parents' faces moulded their sad smiles But mostly the generation that then I knew I looked at now without a clue What goaded pierced eyebrows Belly-buttons and tongues? Would this bevy of over-permeable belles One day seduce my sons? Twenty years on A visit to teenage haunts Made me clearly see That what had changed was mostly me.