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After Ithaka

Keep Ithaka in your mind as you head in the opposite direction,
Whether by choice or chance or just the way the wind blows.
If you are lucky there will be those mornings at the port
In the early hazy sunshine, before the heat is up,
Setting off for some new island; don’t even rush to embark:
Enjoy the portside ambience, the sellers of nuts and sweet Muscat wines.
From the boat you may see dolphins, leaping, playing.
And when you arrive, maybe take another, smaller boat,
To another, smaller island; or explore the interior,
The villages few ever reach; eat
At your leisure shaded by an everlasting plane.
Maybe you will meet someone, the girl who speaks
Of a rose in the desert, which flowers for one day only.
Even if you don’t you will have days of exhilaration,
Just you alone, walking, in the thyme-scented air,
As the raptors gather high above you.
Keep Ithaka always in mind but delay your return.
Delay it for as long as is humanly possible.
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Harry Eyres has become one of the most eloquent advocates of the worldwide Slow movement. Having worked for leading newspapers and magazines as a theatre critic, wine writer and poetry editor, in 2004 he created the Slow Lane column in FT Weekend. Slow Lane (which ran until 2015) proposed a pause for thoughtful enjoyment of the often uncostly and uncostable pleasures and values which make life worth living. He has published a volume of poetry, Hotel Eliseo (Hearing Eye): Vernon Scannell praised it in the Sunday Telegraph as “an enjoyable collection of consistent accomplishment,” describing Eyres as “a mature poet…who has forged a style, pared down, cleanly chiselled, and…admirably suited to his purposes.” He gives regular poetry readings at various venues in London including The Poetry Café. Eyres is also the author of The Beginner’s Guide to Plato’s The Republic (Hodder & Stoughton), the memoir Horace and Me: Life Lessons from an Ancient Poet (Bloomsbury and Farrar, Straus and Giroux: short-listed for the PEN/Ackerley Prize in 2014), and several books on wine. From 2012-5 he was a Senior Fellow at the European Space Policy Institute in Vienna: out of this work came Seeing Our Planet Whole: A Cultural and Ethical View of Earth Observation (Springer). He lives in London, writes about wine (he is wine columnist for Country Life magazine, and a columnist for The World of Fine Wine), culture and politics (for The New Statesman) and enjoys playing tennis and the piano.

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