A clip from Graham Swifts's novel Last Orders:

"He says, 'What do you want to be, Vince? What are you going to be?...What I mean is, what do you want to do?' He smiles, like he don't mean no harm really. 'What job do you want to do?'

And I see them all hanging up before me, like clothes on a rack, all the jobs, tinker, tailor, soldier, and you have to pick one and then you have to pretend for the rest of your life that that's what you are."

A poem inspired by W.H. Auden

“Souls Suffering on the Streets”

Souls suffering on the streets, passionately they weep;

Again we draw the curtains and drift to sleep,

Withholding any attempt to relieve some sorrow,

Always the excuse: tomorrow, tomorrow.

Stop your search for goodness: you won’t find it;

Don’t pray for God’s mercy: mankind is unfit;

Let the hatred, envy, and ignorance go on;

Individuality has become America’s icon.

Tell the homeless woman to stop hungering

And the abused child to stop whimpering;

There is no one to hear your cries;

That man was programmed to love is only a lie.

Heartbeats of humanity are deadened,

And the meaning of love has been cheapened;

God’s tears flood the earth in an anguished downpour;

Not a soul is alive anymore, anymore.