Travelling

How normal it feels
to get around new places—
how basely, physically normal it is
for our feet to touch the ground
and propel us forward, step after step
exactly as they do anywhere.

And if these roads home
one day become
the rivers they once were—
though we might have to pedal the currents
or steady our soles on pebbles—
we’ll soon get used to it.

A flavour’s only new at first taste;
and common sights become invisible;
and love dulls into something necessary;
and in grief we think this new lack
is impossible to live with but we do.


--Jane Arthur, New Zealand poet and owner of Good Books bookstore in Wellington.

Travelling

How normal it feels
to get around new places—
how basely, physically normal it is
for our feet to touch the ground
and propel us forward, step after step
exactly as they do anywhere.

And if these roads home
one day become
the rivers they once were—
though we might have to pedal the currents
or steady our soles on pebbles—
we’ll soon get used to it.

A flavour’s only new at first taste;
and common sights become invisible;
and love dulls into something necessary;
and in grief we think this new lack
is impossible to live with but we do.

-- Jane Arthur, New Zealand poet, from Craven, 2019

Psalm on Sifnos

One does not want,
O Lord, to heap
Up by still waters
Of words a cairn
But hopes to attend
A small covert
Of tamarisk
Whose leaves salty
Yet feathery
Will shed light over
A thickened plot.

One wants at last
To cede the field
To tamarisk
And mastic tree,
To olive and stone,
Stones in the fruit,
Seed in the stones.

--Stephen Yenser (1941- ), Kansas-born American poet, editor, critic, and professor emeritus at UCLA, winner of both the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Bernard F. Prize for Poetry from the Paris Review.

Sifnos is a Greek island in the Cyclades known for its pottery and as the birthplace and inspiration for poets.

Sestina of the Tramp-Royal

Speakin' in general, I 'ave tried 'em all,

The 'appy roads that take you o'er the world.
Speakin' in general, I 'ave found them good
For such as cannot use one bed too long,
But must get 'ence, the same as I 'ave done,
An' go observin' matters till they die.

What do it matter where or 'ow we die,
So long as we've our 'ealth to watch it all—
The different ways that different things are done,
An' men an' women lovin' in this world—
Takin' our chances as they come along,
An' when they ain't, pretendin' they are good?

In cash or credit—no, it aren't no good;
You 'ave to 'ave the 'abit or you'd die,
Unless you lived your life but one day long,
Nor didn't prophesy nor fret at all,
But drew your tucker some'ow from the world,
An' never bothered what you might ha' done.

But, Gawd, what things are they I 'aven't done?
I've turned my 'and to most, an' turned it good,
In various situations round the world—
For 'im that doth not work must surely die;
But that's no reason man should labour all
'Is life on one same shift; life's none so long.

Therefore, from job to job I've moved along.
Pay couldn't 'old me when my time was done,
For something in my 'ead upset me all,
Till I 'ad dropped whatever 'twas for good,
An', out at sea, be'eld the dock-lights die,
An' met my mate—the wind that tramps the world!

It's like a book, I think, this bloomin' world,
Which you can read and care for just so long,
But presently you feel that you will die
Unless you get the page you're readin' done,
An' turn another—likely not so good;
But what you're after is to turn 'em all.

Gawd bless this world! Whatever she 'ath done—
Excep' when awful long—I've found it good.
So write, before I die, "'E liked it all!"

--Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), English poet, novelist, journalist, and short-story writer