Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE REPEATED JOURNEY, by THOMAS MCGRATH


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE REPEATED JOURNEY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Again and again I make the intolerable journey
Last Line: We were for a season
Subject(s): Seasons; Travel; Journeys; Trips


Again and again I make the intolerable journey:
First three days in the locked train, passing my home
On the stormy midnight when no light burns and all the houses
Are shut: then pinesmell, rain, confusion, a cold camp;
Again and again

I make the winter voyage: first the narrow
Sea-passage between the mountains where like frozen
Smoke the waterfalls hang and the scenery becomes portentous,
Dream-like and sullen, charged with a higher reality
Than our own; then, shadowy

As clouds in the roaring night-black ocean, islands
Plunge, fog-bound, nameless; finally, driving
Seaward, the headlands, and the crooked harbor: wreckage,
Spume like spiders crawling, gun-metal water;
Again and again

I climb the hill: past the cemetery, the dead
Fighter aircraft, past the shops where the great
Machines rust in their beds and know it is
Useless, useless, the night-journey inbound and cannot,
Can not turn back --

What am I hunting? I cannot remember. Rain
Slats like shot on the empty tents. The flaps
Are all closed tight on nothing. On ghosts. The night
Comes screaming down on the wind. Boredom. Loneliness.
Again and again

I return to the hunt for something long buried
In Time, like the dead in the cliff-face cemetery.
Loneliness, terror of death, splendor of living --
I rescued these wounded: but cannot reclaim my youth
Nor those lost violent years whose casual ignorant lovers
We were for a season.


Used with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townsend, WA
98368-0271, www.cc.press.org




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