Wild Court

An international poetry journal based in the English Department of King’s College London

‘Not before time’: a poem by Paul Stephenson

Not before time

will I climb the hill
up to the Acropolis
        then climb down again

to sit about at a bar in Psyri
listening to jazz and sipping
        prosecco not before time.

I’ll ask for crisps not before time
and when the bowl is empty,
        more crisps not before time.

I’ll take a thousand photos
of ancient monuments and Greek gods of
        everything not before time.

I’ll walk around the national garden
and notice a single palm tree
        decapitated not before time.

At the port of Piraeus I’ll fend off
the tout trying to flog me designer
        sunglasses not before time.

I’ll go up in the lift to the roof
and build a new Acropolis that takes
        two centuries not before time

and requires ten generations
of my offspring not before time,
        after I’ve died of too many crisps

and sunglasses and photos and gods
and thick-thighed parliament guards
        in pom-pom shoes not before time.

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Paul Stephenson

Paul Stephenson’s first collection Hard Drive was published by Carcanet in 2023. It was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award and Polari Book Prize 2024. He previously published three pamphlets: Those People (Smith/Doorstop, 2015), The Days that Followed Paris (HappenStance, 2016), written after the Paris terrorist attacks, and Selfie with Waterlilies (Paper Swans Press, 2017). He was a Jerwood/Arvon mentee and part of the Aldeburgh Eight. He has an MA in Creative Writing with Pedagogy (Poetry) from the Manchester Writing School. He co-edited the ’Europe’ issue of Magma and has recently co-edited issue 92 on ‘ownership’. He lives between Cambridge and Brussels.