Two Years at the Road Side

ANTHONY HIRST was born in Huddersfield, Yorkshire in 1945. He was educated at Ashville College Harrogate, and Emmanuel College Cambridge, where he studied theology and English. He had a very varied career as library assistant, furniture maker, building contractor, architectural designer and postman, before returning to university in 1992, obtaining an MA in Byzantine Studies and PhD in Modern Greek Literature at Kings College London, after which he was a research fellow at Princeton University and then at Queens University Belfast, where he was later a lecturer in Byzantine and Modern Greek. He is course director of the International Byzantine Greek Summer School, now at Trinity College Dublin. He is the author of GOD AND THE POETIC EGO: THE APPROPRIATION OF BIBLICAL AND LITURGICAL LANGUAGE IN THE POETRY OF PALAMAS, SIKELIANOS AND ELYTIS (Peter Lang, 2004); editor and translator of THESE SCATTERED ISLES: ALONNISOS AND THE LESSER NORTHERN SPORADES by Kstas Mavrkis (Oxford Maritime Research, 2010); and editor of ALEXANDRIA, REAL AND IMAGINED (with Michael Silk, Ashgate Publishing, 2004), THE IONIAN ISLANDS: ASPECTS OF THEIR HISTORY AND CULTURE (with Patrick Sammon, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014). He has re-edited, or de-edited as he prefers to say, the Greek text of the main body of Cavafys poetry for the Oxford Worlds Classics series (C. P. Cavafy, THE COLLECTED POEMS, Oxford University Press, 2007). He has published many articles on modern Greek literature (especially the poetry of Cavafy). He has three children and six grandchildren and in recent years has lived between Stoke Newington in northeast London and an old farmhouse in Sud Tourraine. His previous volumes of poetry are MEMORIALS, NIGHTSCAPES, ETCETERA: POEMS OF SEVERAL DECADES (Colenso Books, 2020) and FLORA AND FAUNA (HOMINIDS INCLUDED) (The Delos Press, 2021).

CONTENTS Introduction viii Him and me 3 Lost consonants 3 Where three roads meet 5 Lost butterfly 7 Linked-verse meditations on the13th of May 2021 8 speaking of the dead 10 Diptych (23rd of June 2021) 11 The Narrow Road 14 Water moths 16 Fehim and his villages (remembering Turkey, Autumn 1968) 19 Strange question, inconclusive answer 21 To die of cancer on the 28th of August 1950 (7th of September 2021) 22 Another day 24 A Roman house 24 So it was you (6th of October 2021) 25 Overloading 26 Two-moon Junction (Luton Airport Parkway) 26 Shellfish 27 Autumn Hill Reservation, Princeton, New Jersey 28 Tonight at Ten . . . the worst drought in years (3rd of December 2021) 28 Frozen January 30 SOME TANGENTIAL THOUGHTS ON A SPECIAL MILITARY OCCUPATION Poem for Zaporizhzhia Day (4th of March 2022) 31 The contents of a room (27th of March 2022) 32 Royal appointees (16th of April 2022) 34 a host, of golden daffodils (16th of April 2022) 34 Bird scarers (27th of April 2022) 36 No pathetic bunker suicide for you (2nd of May 2022) 37 o Seeing eye-to-eye 39 The sound of silence 40 Lived by the It 41 Glimpses of my father 42 Road sense 44 God in his Gardens 46 This New Testament of ours 48 Its all just chicken shit (and eight other titles) 50 Gone with the Wind 51 Wasp sting 51 A long unfinished sentence (16th of July 2022) 52 Late pick-up at the station (26th of August 2022) 54 England, England ber Alles (10th of September 2022) 54 No mellow fruitfulness 56 A split quatrain in blank verse (26th of January 2023) 56 A Vote of Tanks (26th of January 2023) 57 At sixes and sevens thoughts on some of this weeks news (27th of January 2023) 58 Youthanasia (4th of February 2023) 60 The grinding of tectonic plates (10th of February 2023) 62 The Owl and her poor Pussycats (poem for a Braver Man than I) (2nd of May 2023) 63 That Owl again (26th of May 2023) 64 Secret Knowledge Stradivarius and me (6th of June 2023) 68 Hellenic Train (12th of June 2023) 70 Prehistoric spacemen 72 Alcohol-free 73 Titanic idiocy (21st of June 2023) 74 Fish tanka (4th of September 2023) 76 Incomplete scenario, August 1971 78 The end of summer (7th of September 2023) 79 Nomenclature (13th of September 2023) 80 3 in 1 81 The bees needs (25th of September 2023) 82 Reflections on a funeral from afar (27th of September 2023) 83 Brief exchange with Mr T. S. Eliot OM 85 Alternating currents (29th of September 2023) 86 Direct current (29th of September 2023) 87 Gradual ascent to wisdom 88 Being and having 89 What does AI mean? 89 Reborn, rechristened, 1964 90 Top-heavy international sonnet (30th of September 2023) 92 Oligarchy, or Plutocracy (call it what you will, its here, it kills) 92 Too many voices heard in Rama (10th of October 2023) 93 The Judgement of God 94 Policing the World (11th of October 2023) 95 No holds barred (12th of October 2023) 96 You have been warned (13th16th of October 2023) 97 A PERSONAL EPILOGUE The time will come 101 for the love of trees (an epitaph) 103 APPENDIX Words worth and words not worth so much 107 Index of titles and first lines 118