Traveling

To left and right the nearer world goes slipping by.
A hastening parade will always pass this place
And all green verges that between garagings lie.
In leaning rows stand mute onlookers to the race,
Plump cedars massed like jolly mothers gowned in lace
And solitary oaks like melancholy sires.

Here other men would set their names on barns and drives,
Build kingdoms out of crops, send bovine armies brown
And white to vanquish outer lands, share settled lives
With childhood friends. But I dare not, for up and down
I race, past signs to someone's ville or someone's town,
And keep the onward pace my pilgrimage requires.


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