I came across this poem in the latest edition of the London Review of Books a few days ago and was really struck by it.

I learnt or re-learnt a couple of new words, which is always a pleasure. ‘Saronic' refers to ‘an arm of a sea or ocean partly enclosed by land’. I love how the visual layout of the stanzas mirrors the title, with each stanza a strip-like sliver isolated from the next one, but not fully closed off with a full stop, just as how bodies of water are not closed off, but eventually interlinked into the great oceans.

I reacquainted myself with the term ‘asymptote', which in geometry means ‘a straight line that constantly approaches a given curve but does not meet at any infinite distance’. The poem touches upon the idea of never quite being able to grasp what it is you are seeking, whether that is love, happiness, oneness with nature or recreating a past experience. It reminds me of the famous final lines in ‘The Great Gatsby’, as the narrator imagines looking out over the dock and the endless search for something we can never quite reach, and how although we know we can never reach it, the impetus to keep grasping for it is what keeps individuals and civilisation as a whole moving forwards through existence.