Before you left, no one could understand
why you would want to go to such a place—
“Is there anything to see there? What’s wrong
with Europe, anyway?”—but now that you’re there,
you see that others are doing what you are,
traveling indefinitely, taking trains
to place-names that become actual places
then turn back into names again, but changed
forever for your having seen them.
And all of them are reading the same book
about the lonely planet. This is how
they know each other (like a secret sect)
and why they don’t stay lonely for very long.
Or, put another way, because they are lonely
they are easy to meet, and the conversation
takes off faster than the train itself.
By the time you get to your next destination,
you feel as if you are parting with old friends,
and despite their names and home addresses
scribbled inside the cover of your book,
your loneliness returns with a new force:
it’s not that you will never see them again
but rather that you’ll run into them next week
in another province of the lonely planet.
—Jeffrey Harrison
