You can read this poem here.
Cor. Why isn’t this poem better known? I had to look around for ages before I found a copy for you. And it’s so good! It says something so recognisable about the endless anticipation, the magical thinking, which can be hidden inside the pleasure of travel—or rather, inside the kind of travelling which becomes a sort of restless compulsion, an addiction. In fact, this poem is a good meditation on addiction generally: how we can ‘forfeit through endless self-evasion/The estate of simple being’, and how ab-use of anything will always have its ‘stern laws’.
This poem also reminds me how hard I can sometimes find it not to ‘lose [my] eyes’—which I understand to mean the kind of accumulation of experiences which forgets to be properly present to them. It’s too easy to have your head buried in Fifty Things To Do In Venice book and forget actually to be in Venice.