En Route

For Athanase Vantchev de Thracy

‘This is the world, or part of it.’
Sean O’Brien

My friend, these are the carriages
And this the train, and this the
Passing landscape which may be
Quicker now, and this the way
We earn a crust, and this the
Jacket and this the open-necked
Shirt, and this the sheaf of poems
Unpublished except in the
Feasting hall of cyberspace.

How could we know, we who
Skated on the thin ice of
Philosophy, we who were
Intoxicated by the fug of
Incense, that it would come
To this: running away with a
Dish and a spoon, tapping our heels
On the floor we thought solid
Until we felt the motion sickness?

For, in the end, this is all there is:
The blanket and the pillow,
The dream of soft skin, the
Unanswered questions and the books
Which we’ll never reread; in the end,
It comes to this: the blinkered look
At midnight, the face in the mirror
That belongs to someone else, the stations of the night,
The bedside lamp, the crossing of the frontier.