Begin again, surely you must begin again!
Return me at once to the womb that in pain,
Thrust me prematurely into this muddy place,
Doomed to a life of depravity and waste,
Reshape this deformed lump of earth, of dirt,
Make me something else, something new, something of worth,
For since birth I was the flawed thing, the unclean thing,
Nothing to look upon for the shame it would bring,
Me naught but a needful desperate creature,
Full to the brim of the baser thing by nature,
Still, whatever the process, whatever the means,
I wish to be clean! Yes, I would be clean!
w.b. JS