Anton Floyd – Longing

I’m longing for a permanent recess

from these tedious follies of empire;

from slogans that make a virtue of excess.

Spare me from those who callously profess

their worn-out shibboleths of power.

I’m longing for a permanent recess

and some ease of living without distress.

The world is burning yet in hellish fire

from slogans that make a virtue of excess.

This all-devouring vanity, success,

has made of innocence a monstrous pyre.

I’m looking for some permanent redress.

Even stones, dumb till now, do now protest.

With justice rise (we must) before we all expire

from slogans that make a virtue of excess.

I’m longing for a world in which largesse

is the defining gift – each heart’s desire.

I’m longing for a permanent recess

from slogans that make a virtue of excess.

Cyprus – A Late Afternoon

Γλυκά καρπούζια. Έχω καρπούζια,
κόκκινο σαν το αίμα του λαού.

Sometimes when I hear the sound
of a double-cab pick-up on the road
it winds back the ticking clock.
Childhood ghosts suddenly crop up
like flares in a spool of ciné film –
Not just the whirring sound on tarmac
of hostile ferret cars on patrol;
or police vans with loud hailers
enforcing the curfew; but also
the sound one late afternoon
of a laden truck, a village vendor,
his rough voice thinning
and sharp over the tannoy:
Sweet watermelons. I have watermelons
red like the blood of the people.
The noise alarms roosting birds and
the flame tree in the garden explodes.

---

That Lone Tree
on the Edge of a Dream

That lone tree, glassed in the lake,
carries the sky in its branches.
In the water, as if under ice,
there are indistinguishable faces
guarding their dark element
with their terrible mouths –
all teeth and thin lipped.
They are mouthing hurts
miming their disbeliefs,
mocking the tree’s isolation.
They see only that tree
and can’t imagine the reach
of its roots or the wide forests
poised in its tiny seeds.

---

© Anton Floyd

Anton Floyd was born in Cairo, Egypt, a Levantine mix of Irish, Maltese, English and French Lebanese. Raised in Cyprus, he lived through the struggle for independence and the island remains close to his heart. Educated in Ireland, he studied English at Trinity College, Dublin and University College Cork. He has lived and worked in the Eastern Mediterranean.  Now retired from teaching, he lives in West Cork. Poems published and forthcoming in Ireland and elsewhere. Poetry films selected for the Cadence Poetry Film Festival (Seattle, 2023) and the Bloomsday Film Festival (James Joyce Centre 2023), another, Woman Life Freedom, dedicated to the women of Iran, was commissioned by IUAES. Several times prize-winner of the Irish Haiku Society International Competitions; runner-up in Snapshot Press Haiku Calendar Competition. Awarded the DS Arts Foundation Prize for Poetry (Scotland 2019). Poetry collections, Falling into Place (Revival Press, 2018) and Depositions (Doire Press, 2022); a special edition of Depositions translated into Irish, Scots Gaelic, Welsh, and Scots with an introduction by Professor Seosamh Watson (Gloír, 2024). New collections On the Edge of Invisibility and Singed to Blue are in preparation. Newly appointed UNESCO – RILA affiliate artist at the University of Glasgow.