I was hoping to travel the world backward in my red wagon, one knee in, the other foot pushing. I was going to see the sights I'd imagined: Spanish buildings, trellised with flowers, a thousand Rapunzels brushing their long black hair with street vendors singing the lyrics of Lorca. I'd be towed by a stray Miura over the green Pyrenees, turning the bull loose before French customs. At the edge of the forest Rene Char was roasting a leg of lamb over a wood fire. We shared a gallon of wine while mignonettes frolicked for us. This all occurred to me forty-two years ago while hoeing corn and it's time for it all to come to pass along with my canoe trip through Paris, with Jean Moreau trailing a hand in the crystalline Seine, reading me Robert Desnos. Why shouldn't this happen? I have to rid myself of this last land mine, the unlived life. | Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!Other Poems of Interest...THE JOY OF WRITING by WISLAWA SZYMBORSKA ODE TO WISDOM by ELIZABETH CARTER EXTRACTS FROM AN OPERA: 2. DAISY'S SONG by JOHN KEATS THE ENKINDLED SPRING by DAVID HERBERT LAWRENCE TO GOD AND IRELAND TRUE by ELLEN O'LEARY ARMS AND THE BOY by WILFRED OWEN |