I am staying with James Elroy Flecker with his poem about a journey to Samarkand - one of the oldest inhabited cities in the world, prospering from its location on the trade route between China and Europe.
However, the poem is also a parable about how we should face that greater journey - Life
THE GOLDEN JOURNEY TO SAMARKAND
We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go
Always a little further: it may be
Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,
Across that angry or that glimmering sea,
White on a throne or guarded in a cave
There lives a prophet who can understand
Why men were born: but surely we are brave,
Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.
Sweet to ride forth at evening from the wells
When shadows pass gigantic on the sand,
And softly through the silence beat the bells
Along the Golden Road to Samarkand.
We travel not for trafficking alone;
By hotter winds our fiery hearts are fanned:
For lust of knowing what should not be known
We make the Golden Journey to Samarkand.
James Elroy Flecker
These two videos, with their haunting music, blend the colourful architecture of the past with modern life in Samarkand:
'For lust of knowing what should not be known..'
The urge to move on and not settle. "The Great Migration" was televised by National Geographic several years ago. It told how human life began in Africa and that the base of our language is Indo-European. To be a gypsy, always looking for a better place. How our faces and skin and bodies changed according to the place on Earth where we settled, thousands of years ago.
That music was the topping on the cake. Minor key! Gives one a strange sense of longing and a strong feeling that we have been here many times before - and that we know these places - and that we loved those people, once upon a time, in another life, in another world.
Thank you C. That was a fabulous experience.