Perhaps then I am dull of soul,
That I can walk through London’s lights
And see only crowds, impenetrable.
Jostling, confusing, noisy,
A shock from my quiet home.
The bare trees seem to have no place
Amid this concrete land,
The din of thousands ripples
The water of the seeping Thames,
Purple and red, blue and yellow
Flashing lights, pulsing without a heart,
I watched the crowds I did not understand their victory.
I was a frog burning in a desert,
A rabbit in the streetlights of Christmas
I thought I knew London, as my feet sung on the stone,
I passed St Martins, no longer in the fields,
The church was my compass, but it pointed not.
I know Paris and its compasses,
Like the Sacre Coeur and
The church of Notre Dame de Lorette,
They point south.
But as the train left the station
I felt the familiar pull against nature,
I remembered that travelling
Takes you out of your comfort zone.