For those interested, the two poems and Durrell’s glittering aphorisms are included in this book’s

You tell yourself: I’ll be gone
To some other land, some other sea,
To a city lovelier far than this
Could ever have been or hoped to be –
Where every step now tightens the noose,
A heart in a body buried and out of use.
How long, how long must I be here confined
Among these dreary purlieus
Of the common mind? Wherever now I look
Black ruins of my life rise into view.
So many years have I been here
Spending and squandering, and nothing gained.
(To which the poet replies):
There’s no new land, my friend, no
New sea, for the city will follow you,
In the same streets you’ll wander endlessly,
The same mental suburbs slip from youth to age,
In the same house grow white at last –
The city is cage.
No other places, always this
Your earthly landfall,
And no ship exists to take you from yourself”
and
       The god abandons Antony
“Do not be tricked and never say
It was a dream or that your ears misled.
Leave cowards their entreaties and complaints.
Let all such useless hopes be shed,
And, like a man long since prepared,
Deliberately, with pride, with resignation
Befitting you and worthy of such a city
Turn to the open window and look down
To drink past all deceiving
Your last dark rapture from the mystical throng And say farewell, farewell to Alexandria leaving”