Travel

Loving you, flesh to flesh, I often thought
Of travelling penniless to some mud throne
Where a master might instruct me how to plot
My life away from pain, to love alone
In the bruiseless embrace of stone and lake.

Lost in the fields of your hair I was never lost
Enough to lose a way I had to take;
Breathless beside your body I could not exhaust
The will that forbid me contract, vow,
Or promise, and often while you slept
I looked in awe beyond your beauty.

                                     Now
I know why many men have stopped and wept
Halfway between the loves they leave and seek,
And wondered if travel leads them anywhere -
Horizons keep the soft line of your cheek,
The windy sky's a locket for your hair.

-Leonard Cohen

 

 

 
Paintings by George Inness (Inness died in 1894 at Bridge of Allan in Scotland. According to his son, he was viewing the sunset, when he threw up his hands into the air and exclaimed, "My God! oh, how beautiful!", fell to the ground, and died minutes later. Wikipedia)