Next Year, I'm Going to Travel

Next year, I'm going to travel

to the last countries on my list,

where I cannot read the billboards

and I cannot speak to strangers,

for they cannot speak to me.

I'll stay in the shabby motels

on the streets with broken lights;

in towns not twinned with others,

in regions, bezirks and oblasts,

where there is no BBC.

I'll write some dead-dropped letters;

picture postcards, post-restante

in ink, with a pen or a feather,

in search of lost relations,

who'll never write to me.