Table of Contents

1 The Women of Kars

The Couple 9

Olives 10

Unasked For 11

Finding Prostanna 13

In Jean Dubuffet's Crimson Landscape 15

Babylon 17

Tristia 18

Near the Euphrates 19

Impossible 20

Poem: 'I never really wanted...' 22

Lines Written in a Hotel Room in Afyon 23

The Cut 25

Tramway 27

Partial Explanation 29

Practical Criticism 30

Difficult 32

The Towel of Alyattes 33

The Result 34

The Women of Kars (or Some Other Places I Know and Do Not Know) 36

2 After Cavafy

Without Memorial 45

Fever of Kleitos 46

The Battle of Magnesia 48

Antiochus Epiphanes 50

The Gods in their Wisdom 51

In Ösroene 53

Disillusionment of Demetrius Soter 54

The Triumph of John Kantakouzenos 56

Exiles 58

A Byzantine Nobleman Writing in Exile 59

In a Syrian Harbour 60

3 The Bergamot Tree

Pinara 63

In the Wake of the Day 64

Finding Prostanna (2) 66

Two Poems with an Uncritical Apparatus 68

Stations 72

Prose for Ebubekir Akbulut 76

The Antiochiad 80