Today is National Poetry Day, and this year's theme is Identity. Given its focus on finding one's 'proper ground', I think the following choice is justified. The first stanza is also quite pertinent to me at the moment as I'm currently longing to escape the family home and am looking for a new place to live with nowhere really standing out, every place having its faults.
By Philip Larkin
The place where I could say
This is my proper ground,
Here I shall stay;
Nor met that special one
Who has an instant claim on everything I own
Down to my name;
To find such seems to prove
You want no choice in where
To build, or whom to love;
You ask them to bear
You off irrevocably,
So that its not your fault
Should the town turn dreary,
The girl a dolt.
Yet, having missed them, you're
Bound, none the less, to act
As if what you settled for
Mashed you, in fact;
And wise to keep away
From thinking you still might trace
Uncalled-for to this day
Your person, your place.
Three months after “Places, Loved Ones” was published, Larkin arrived in
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