Tobias Thornes – The Poor Print

‘Postscript for the 1-2-5’

by Tobias Thornes Very soon they missed him, When the air conditioning leaked, And everyone complained about The smaller, harder seats. And when the new train screeched to halt Half an hour late, Few among the passengers Thought it worth the wait. But Progress wouldn’t hearken To this first journey’s curse: They’d spent too many […]

Poetry

Requiem for the Intercity 1-2-5

by Tobias Thornes They’ve given him his notice, They’ve settled on a time, To disappear who forty years Has trundled down this line. The window-wipers dry his eyes, The air-brakes sigh and hiss, As round the bend once more they send The friend that we will miss. Hear him hum as up he starts, Feel […]

Comment, Creative Writing, Prose

Slow Travel: End of the World That Was

by Tobias Thornes I could not know, as I scrambled through the suburbs and savannah of Kenya and Ethiopia while May slipped into June of 2019, that my long Slow Travel – over a year by then in duration – was so soon, so hurriedly, to come to a close. Since that sunny spring day […]

Creative Writing, Culture, Prose

Slow Travel: Nature’s Primordial Display

by Tobias Thornes Cecil Rhodes once dreamed of a railway that would run right up the length of Africa, from Cape Town to Cairo through a long line of conjoined British colonies. One by one, most of the necessary tribes and kingdoms of ancient Africa had fallen into Britain’s grip by the end of the […]

Comment, Culture, Prose

Slow Travel: Colonised by Capitalism

by Tobias Thornes It was with some regret that I set out again to sea, and left the magical island and its comforting solidarity in exchange for days and nights sliding across the empty waves. This time, though, my journey was to be much shorter than before, and it wasn’t long I had to wait […]

Comment, Prose

Slow Travel: Rich Lands

by Tobias Thornes It was nearing summer in the Northern Hemisphere when my boat at long last docked, but somewhere along the way we had slipped imperceptibly into the South, and – for now at least – winter was setting in around me for the second time in six months. I didn’t know it then, […]

Comment, Prose

Slow Travel: The Vanity of Man

by Tobias Thornes How curious it is, my friends, that my memories should remain so vivid of the far distant journeys that I made so many decades ago. I have now recalled to you that first happy adventure I had, in the long-ago summer of 2017, which so piqued my yearning for exploration and magnified […]