TWOGETHER

Poem for  Today - Wednesday - September 17, 2014

   THE TRAVELLING OUT

I wonder, since we are both travelling out,

If we may go together? Thank you.

You may be sure you will be alone

And private as though I were no one.

God knows, I do not wish to increase your burden.

Naturally, these airports, blinding cities,

And foundry lights confuse you, make you

More solitary than the sight of one lost lamp

Across a bare land promising life there—

Someone over that field alone and perhaps

Waiting for you. That used to be the way.

Feel perfectly free to choose how

You will be alone, since we are going together.

Of course, I never move, I merely hold you

In my mind like a prayer. You are my way

Of praying, and I have chosen you out of hordes

Of travellers to speak to silently, on my own.

I will be with you, with your baffled anger

Among fuming cities, with your grief

At having lost dark fields and lamplight.

It is my way of moving, or praying

Oh, not to give you someone like me,

That's all over, impossible, I go nowhere;

And besides, nothing is given, absolutely

Nothing and no one, only white sermons among

The white of a billion bulbs. No,

Sitting here behind my shutters at twilight,

I am stretching over the blazing lanes,

The dazed crowds jostled and razed

By light, only to join your mind and guide you

Gently, leading you, not, alas, to my own lamp

Across the fields of the world, or to a cozy last

Prayer of lamplight blessing the fields of the air,

But out into hordes of stars that move away

As we move, and for which you’re travelling

Prepares you to go out a little more boldly,

All alone as I am alone.

© Lucile Adler

The New Yorker Book of Poems,

pages 741 - 742