“Travel”, the 22nd poem from “A Light Goes On”, was originally published in a beautifully themed anthology- “Way Words Issue 7: Vacation” -presented by the Writer’s Workout.
I have always been fascinated by the etymology of language, and this is perhaps where the title and the world view laid out in this work originated from too.
Travel comes from “Travail” in Middle English, meaning “Painful or Labourious Effort”. Travail(ler) is still in the modern French as “work”.
Trace it further and you have the Old French “travailed” (1300s)-“to toil or labour”-originally from the Latin “Trepalium”, meaning an “instrument of torture”.
The derivation of “Trepalium” itself is “Tripalis” (yes-note the “Trip” in there) which means “Having three stakes” (tri- for three and palus- for stakes).
Now maybe it’s my Irish Catholic upbringing, but instruments of torture?, three stakes?…
We are only a painful station away from adding a hill, a saviour and it’s next stop- Calvary.
Travel does have other ascribed meanings such as “difficult journey”. This and it’s relationship to “toil” could also snake back to that most original difficult journey, the one out of Eden and into earthly toil.
The photograph that doubles as this week’s background is the magnificent city of Berlin from a seat on a low fares airline en route to Paris as the world opened up to -Travel- again in 2021.
Neither a laborious nor torturous journey ,or as the poem puts it-“The world does have artefacts that are worth travelling great distances for”.
Algo.
P.S.-My second collection, Unreconciled Doors, is the subject of Season 2 of the Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines podcast-follow it on your favourite podcast provider to listen along. If you subscribe you are essentially getting my first two collections (including the first,which is BE.aGaIN) and a gown and mask in the delivery room of where the poems were born!!. Season 3 coming soon!.
Algo Poetry-Behind the Lines 