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Prologue: Alpha Item, Man, Sign

You want that paper? The Telegraph? No, please buy it. If you don’t buy it I will buy it for you. I tell you, this is the best periptero in Athens. Tell me, where do you come from? Ah yes, which part of London is that? Do you mind if I walk with you? You do not. Would you like to smoke? Do you mind if I smoke? You want to eat? I tell you where to eat. Here is the card. Go in there and tell them my name. My name is Sami. Here, I will spell it for you. S is for Sign, A is for Alpha, M is for Man and I is for Item. Go in there and ask for Mr Vassilis. Do you mind if I walk with you? I am Greek and I must tell you I am ashamed to be Greek. No, you are right, you must not trust me. Do not take your hand away from your pockets. I tell you, I am the worst man in Athens. You are here on a tour? Key Tours, CHAT Tours, Cosmos. You see, I know them all. all. Here, you want to buy? No, please, I insist, just to look, not to buy. These people are my friends. Here, give them a discount - 50%, 100%. All right, we go down there. Do you know bouzouki? Do you mind if I walk with you?

*

Remember as we came
Signs bobbing over concrete -
GOODYEAR HELLAS HOOVER,

Wonky roadside shrines
NISSAN on a concrete block
In the middle of a field

Precisely nowhere / seven miles to Thebes.

The rods stick up through concrete
In half-built villas, here and there
Waving their rusty stems

And, as we pass, imagine
I am this other, seated
Under a living awning
It might be of wisteria
In some such dusty half-built town
As we keep driving through -
Emigrant not colonist,
Not like those others who set out
Once, cities under the prow.
Here, oranges glow
Hung lamp-like in the upper branches.
Scent wafts from blossom lower down
To blend with diesel.
“There I’ll sit and sip
Watch as the night comes on...”
                                                 Today
And still in the bus I’m feeling ill.
I get out, stretch my legs
Eat bread and meat, under a leafless tree
Pale in its armour of sunlight,
Look up at mountains
                             Olympos
Then a hill-town, rugs
Spread everywhere across the road

A concrete church, its flattened dome
And on the hillside, concrete hives.

*

I paused, the whole tree humming
Pine heavy with its fruit of sound
In front of the Museum at Delphi
That still grey morning -

Le bourdon, tu entends?

She pausing likewise
On the ball of her foot.

*

Back in Athens, the mephos
The fossil brought up from clefts in earth
Emits this brown glare on the skyline.

Down there the taxi driver -
He had two radios.
Through one he spoke, to one he listened
Moving slowly into
The tide of metal.

Up here it’s twilight.
The sale of tickets ceases.
The music from her radio
Is cracked and rasping -
It joins us to the city down below.

*

White city, hill
A broken skull.
The polished marble pieces

Paved our ascent.
Here at the summit
Flaps the national flag.

Cards proclaim the strike.
One has blown here
Rising and rising on a hot wind

All the way up to where
The Germans sit and drink their beer
Brewed here under licence.

Down below, the city
Extends towards its rim of hills,
Limestone blurred with a grey scrub,

Small concrete blocks and half-made roads,
Traffic, dust and music,
Carpets hung from balconies

As if spattered with blood of the sun
And here and there rough glitter
Among the concrete-white.

Turning the other way
We can just see the island -
A shadow, that we visited.

The lottery seller came as well
Carrying his staff of numbers
Into its salt of light.

The boat departed.
The evening chilled
Where in the gulf a sunset hung, becalmed.

A small girl carries a candle
Of sallow wax the colour of her skin
Out from inside the shrine.

Beside me hangs a telephone -
‘Information -
Where to go and what to see’.

It’s in four languages. I’m tempted
To lift the battered oracle,
Hear what its creaking tones rehearse.

Instead I go inside
And drop the last of my small change
Before the picture of a starving child.

Sounding not quite real
The light coins rattle in the tin.
Where we descend

Someone has written
Engraved in the living cactus
Lebanon in my heart

Athens / Delphi / Athens