Itinerary

The guidebooks play deception; oceans are 
A property of mind. All maps are fiction, 
All travelers come to separate frontiers.

The coast, they said, is barren; birds go over 
Unlighting, in search of richer inland gardens. 
No green weed thrusts its tendril from the rock face.

Visit it if you must; then turn again
To the warm pleasing air of colored towns 
Where rivers wind to lace the summer valleys.

The coast is naked, sharp with cliffs, unkind, 
They said; scrub-bitten. Inland there are groves 
And fêtes of light and music.

                               But I have seen
Such denizens of enchantment print these sands 
As seldom prowl the margins of old charts:
Stallions of verd antique and wild brown children 
And tails of mermaids glittering through the sea!