Thursday, December 13, 2012

Destinations


Here's a new poem from John Lyons


Destinations


Hoy no ha venido nadie a preguntar;
ni me han pedido en esta tarde nada.
César Vallejo
We are destinations:
not Rome or Athens,
or São Paulo, or the zoo;
as friends or lovers,
sisters or brothers
fathers or mothers,
we are the destination,
and neither travel nor tourism is
an out-of-body experience;
we may take places to our heart
just as we take people to our heart
but we are always the destination
just as we are always the recipient
of the gift we give, of the giving,
of the love we make, of the loving;
we are the place where others
meet us, the point of arrival
and the point of departure,
our bodies and our senses
the theatre of our soul
in which our deepest dramas and
and most unworldly loves
are daily enacted; Barcelona
came to me one torrid summer,
many many years ago, the air,
dry as a whip, lashed my cheeks,
entered the deepest recesses
of my lungs, fed me with dust,
threw me into myself
like a discarded rag.
I was the destination
and nobody called.
Not a hair out of place,
not a stone unturned,
and nobody called.

São Carlos, 12 December 2012