British Writer Lawrence Durrell (1912-1990)

He was a British writer who spent little of his life in England. Lawrence Durrell was born in India and lived most of his life around Greece and the Greek Isles. In addition to being a novelist (especially the four novels of The Alexandria Quartet), Durrell was a great travel writer. I am currently reading his Sicilian Carousel (1977) in which he travels around Sicily in a tour bus and, wonder of wonders, makes it interesting. He was also a poet:

Delos

For Diana Gould

On charts they fall like lace,
Islands consuming in a sea
Born dense with its own blue:
And like repairing mirrors holding up
Small towns and trees and rivers
To the still air, the lovely air:
From the clear side of springing Time,
In clement places where the windmills ride,
Turning over grey springs in Mykonos,
In shadows with a gesture of content.

The statues of the dead here
Embark on sunlight, sealed
Each in her model with the sightless eyes:
The modest stones of Greeks,
Who gravely interrupted death by pleasure.
And in harbours softly fallen
The liver-coloured sails –
Sharp-featured brigantines with eyes –
Ride in reception so like women:
The pathetic faculty of girls
To register and utter desire
In the arms of men upon the new-mown waters,
Follow the wind, with their long shining keels
Aimed across Delos at a star.