Two Poems By Mark Ley Dear Diary Dear diary, Do you think it might possibly Be time, at last, To stop thinking And start living? What became of our friends, Whom we loved and laughed with? Some died of drink, some of broken hearts, Some drowned in puddles, some in seas, Some went in search of glory And never returned, Some stayed at home And only dreamed, Some found religion, Some found God, Some found nothing But themselves. Europe is mythology and killing: See it in the face Of every stranger in the street. The weasel on the inside of my skull Is digging his claws in. A sick animal Without philosophy or direction, I sweat weird fevers, Climbing the walls of my mind. Requiems of snow are falling On this city, On this world. Infancy Piloting paper aeroplanes on the thermals of childhood, I survived a thousand crashes To cross the Atlantic and circumnavigate the globe. Certain Irish summers of my infancy reverberate with me now,
still, and always, -tumbling and chasing over the grassy
dunes at Bannow, above the dazzle-strand, toasting the sun
with pink lemonade, among the starfish and seashell days… Go ahead, play below, behind and beyond the notes, And ignore the critics who say you just play out of tune. A memory, a curio: A Devonian trilobite, its eye lenses Exquisitely preserved for hundreds of millions of years.
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