Juvenilia - Clear Sky in Anguish, Classification

Published in the school magazine, The Richian, and in a collection called Outraged Refugee in 1978, Clear Sky in Anguish was among my earliest, formative attempts to write in this syllabic and rhymed verse form that Thom Gunn used in his first three books.
It's a neurotic little poem for a 17 or 18 year old and it wasn't until a couple of years later, in the poem now called Ferdinand in Glib Remarks, that I think we can say I moved out of the 'juvenilia' stage, if at all. It's a bit portentous but I hope it's not the worst poem a sixth form boy ever wrote.

Clear Sky in Anguish

Tonight, everyone's sleeping
Under a clear sky and our
Anguish will ebb away, out
Towards the cold stars creeping
Home. But we sleep where we are,
Following a random route.

Tonight, minds embracing where
They meet in mid air diffused
Now dance the slow movement set
Against the oncoming cares
And the clouds emerging loose
From the horizon and yet

What doubts now linger in those
Sleeping minds, knowing the clear
Sky cannot last with the wish
Tomorrow was not so close,
And we know everyone here
sees the clear sky in anguish.

The previous year I had still been in my avant-garde, experimentalist mode, expressing a cry of repressed teenage individuality thus,

CLASSIFICATION

wehaveto

conformto

thenormbe

ordinaryb

ethesamed

onotmoveb

EBIGIFYOU

arebigbut

otherwise

dontbebig

followthe

paththati

sinfronto

fyouandke

epgoingun

tilyouare

stoppedso

metimesif

eellikeat

routinasa

rdinetina

ndiwantto break out and be me.

(on an old typewriter these lines made a straight line down the right hand side but on a computer they don't)