View Of A Stranger

                                                     View Of A Stranger

It seems indiscreet to peer inside

This blue-bound diary

And read the youthful scribblings

The secret scriptures

Of a young soul seeking

What he thinks is love

Intimate and vulnerable

His tormented, tortured yearnings

Spelled out day by day

In his tight, neat handwriting

In his black and blue biros

Using the cryptic code

That is not difficult to decipher

 

Snooping through the writing

Prying among the pages

Of this joyless journal

I am struck by his outlook

The black and white world

Of the early Seventies

So short on subtlety

Lacking nuance

The direct and raw emotion

The hurt and the anger

The brutal honesty

Of this callow youth

Only recently a child

 

I marvel at his motivations

His immature ideas

And his carnal calculations

This rough, strange juvenile

Living in his different world

Thinking ugly thoughts

I could never entertain

 

I wonder at this person from the past

A ghost from forty years ago

And find it almost impossible

To admit the surprising truth

That I cannot recognise myself

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2022