poetry

I'm sitting across the country from where I usually am, in fact I am in Small World Coffee in Princeton, NJ. Sigh. I love traveling.

My super fantastic cousin gave me a birthday card/present yesterday (he knows me well, even though it's months after my birthday I definitely appreciate a present). In the card he wrote part of the poem The Golden Journey to Smarkland.

Pause for a second - I have to tell you - I don't usually like poetry. I wish I loved poetry, but in all honesty, most of the time I just. don't. get. it. This is really frustrating for me. It's so beautiful and expressing such emotion and I just miss all of that because my brain is not wired to really understand the nuances of writing.

On that note I will now say, I love the poem he wrote in my card. It expresses a how I feel a lot of the time, particularly when I travel. So here it is:

THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.

We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.

-James Elroy Flecker