Oikophobia

‘Oikophobia is a stage through which the adolescent mind all but inevitably passes. But it is also a stage in which we can become arrested.’ Roger Scruton

It seems, as if in answer to the adolescent need

To turn one’s back on all that one loved best

And walk into the world and then to test

Each old idea which lately had been seed

From which the current self had grown,
One had despaired.

For on finding there were blooms more dazzling bright,

More gaudy; hybrids bred for trumpeting their right

To dominate the public parks, be shown,

The latest, greatest, must have, modern craze

One had offered up one’s soul

For hybridising treatment, so the whole,

Native flower were wiped out.  To erase

The subtle beauty of the wild thing

So fitted for the soil, the cold, damp air,

Had been one’s mission and one’s only care

To emulate the fashionable, bring

Something of that showy, new florescence

In the juvenile belief that it would thrive,

Take over.  Full of joy, and still alive,

One believed one could acquire a new quintessence.