I have been amazed

by accounts of my life
during the few years that I kept a diary.
I have a terrible memory, and even after
reading the diaries, forget what I did,
where I went, and some of the people I met. 
I can recall very little of childhood -
just a few incidents
and embarrassments lodged in my brain.
Nor do I remember my first erotic kiss,
my first fall from a bike or a sleigh,
the first time I camped out in the rain,
the first time I saw an alligator.
But this morning, 'out of the blue'
(or rather the black)
I suddenly remembered that, way back
- was it 1962 or later ? -
I asked if I might join the Queen's University
Poetry Group which included Northern Ireland's
future Nobel prizewinner and one or two
better poets than he - but was refused, because
I was not a student of English, but of Philosophy.

I am still effetely writing a sort-of-philosophical
sort-of-sub-poetry.