There and back again
 

London, N16.
Romance of the underground.
I wandered all around.
The Things to See were seen.

Then Europe’s ragged hem
for Rembrandt and Vermeer,
pindas en nog twee bier
in The Hague and Amsterdam.

The Bridge Inn on North Quay.
Beyond the sliding door
a face you’ve seen before
can change things. Utterly.

Hi, David—

I like the simple, direct presentation. Traveling is fun and exciting, but nothing warms the heart like the familiar. I had to check the Dutch expression, “Peanuts and two more beers.” I have noticed that your poems often incorporate a line or two in a language other than English. I assume that The Bridge is a watering hole in Douglas. “There’s no place like home.” Much enjoyed!

Glenn

I like it, too. I like how the end-stopped lines at the start become more enjambed and less predictable as the poem progresses. That mirrors the growing unpredictability of the things done and felt.

Susan

.
First of all, I'd like to take this opportunity to express my gratefulness for living in a time when the world is at my fingertips and so much information can be gleaned in the blink of an eye. As I arrived at the final stanza I wondered where your poem was taking me. So I searched "Bridge Inn on North Quay" ("search" is such an overstatement/misnomer in this context — It's more like a "request") and discovered ("discovered" is such a overstatement/misnomer in this context — more like it was handed to me on a silver platter) that it was a place on Isle of Man — thus giving meaning to the title. Ironically, the real search and discovery takes place within the confines of your poem.

It's a reverie poem of a sort. It is a distillation of decades. It's even got a hint of Homer's Odyssey (at least in my wild imagination that allows for great leaps and bounds to arrive at comparisons :D)

I love the description of the coastal outline of Europe as being a "ragged hem".

The poem is plain and simple — something you excel at, imo — while still constructed in such a way as to create depth utilizing phrasing, lineation, meter and rhyme scheme (there's something about the a/b/b/a pattern that suits this poem so well) that add bulk where there is none in the telling of the story. It is one of my favorite kinds of poems: one that is not trying to say anything in a poetically profound way yet has that quality to it that allows a certain profoundness to seep in in the most unassuming way.

Long live short poems!

.

I'm getting a different sentiment to the "no place like home " trope. It seems to me that our narrator ha been off on his travels and is back home for a spell when he sees a friendly face in the pub and, bang, he's in love. The "sliding doors" image is like the film where the world bifurcates at that precise point. In another universe the face would not have been there and our hero would be on his way elsewhere. The killer phrase is the one word final sentence "Utterly". Echoes of Frost's two roads in a wood ("and that made all the difference"). You do manage to get an awful lot into a few lines David.

Thanks Glenn, Susan, Jim and Joe.

Joe has interpreted it correctly. (You are a very good close reader, Joe!) Any ambiguities that have misled Glenn, Susan and Jim aside are clearly my fault, but I am glad that Joe has shown it is not completely misleading.

I know the sliding door is now a bit of a cliché, but my confident memory is that the snug of the Bridge really did have a sliding door in those days. Which is convenient for me. (It's all rooted in reality, folks!)

And yes, it was such a pivotal moment. I was very happy in the Netherlands, and had not thought of returning home so soon, but we weren't far into our negotiations when I realised that this was non-negotiable.

This is a rare example of a poem that I have written for a particular purpose, as part of a larger structure. I'm putting together a collection of my IOM poems - part-chronological and part-thematic - and I needed something to demarcate what was essentially before my leaving from what came essentially after my return. This, I hope, will serve as that hinge. I could add "(1983-1987)", but do I need to?

I have lifted the title from somewhere else, of course, but it seems (to me) perfect for my purpose.

Sorry for banging on at such length about all that.

Cheers all

David

There and Back Again
 

Hi David,
Coming a bit late to this one, and glad I didn't miss it. I did enjoy it! I like short, succinct poems that suggest more than they explain. I especially enjoyed the last stanza and your most effective use of a fragment at the end. (Yes, I did understand that your life changed in that moment.)

A question: Would you consider a colon instead of a period after Quay, since the rest of the stanza is about what happened there?

Thanks for this one!
Barbara

The title is the alternate title of Tolkien’s The Hobbit, another odyssey ending with a happy homecoming.

Hi Barbara. Thanks for popping in here. Ah yes, I see the point of the colon. I will definitely consider that.

And Glenn has it exactly on the title.

Cheers both

David