POETRY IS LIKE TAKING A DEEP BREATH

Saturday 16 October 2010

THE TOURISTS

Carl Spitzweg
1808-1885
19th Century English Tourist in the Roman Campagna


Arriving was their passion,
Into the new place out of the blue
Flying, sailing, driving - 
How well these veteran tourists knew
Each fashion of arriving.

Leaving a place behind them,
There was no sense of loss; they fed
Upon the act of leaving -
So hot their hearts for the land ahead -
As a kind of pre-conceiving.

Arrival has stern laws, though,
Condemning men to lose their eyes
If they have treated travel
As a brief necessary disease,
A pause before arrival.

And merciless the fate is 
Of him who leaves nothing behind,
No hostage, no reversion;
He travels on, not only blind
But a stateless person.

Fleeing from love and hate,
Pursuing change, consumed by motion,
Such arrivistes, unseeing,
Forfeit through endless self-evasion
The estate of simple being.



C. Day Lewis
1904-1972
Poet Laureate