I was reading through the Journal of the American Medical Association today

and came across this quote from D.H.Lawrence (1885-1930) (line
breaks from the original prose as I read them in my mind)
I would name it:


In the old skin

Sometimes snakes can't slough.
They can't burst their old skin.
Then they go sick
and die inside the old skin,
and nobody ever sees
the new pattern.

It needs a real desperate recklessness
to burst your old skin at last.
You simply don't care what happens to you,
if you rip yourself in two,
so long as you do get out.
It also needs a real belief in the new skin.

Otherwise you are likely never to make that effort.
Then you gradually sicken
and go rotten and die
in the old skin.