A lamentation upon the fall of Constantinople 29 May 1453

Photo by Raimond Klavins on Unsplash — St Sophia’s cathedral with cross removed, surrounded by minarets

None of us will survive,
we must strive again,
to seed some fallow earth
with the holy mysteries
of the Byzantines.

Their intelligence mirrored in mirth,
amidst the agonies of birth, and death,
comes the accidental revelation,
a voice that will always sing
of the majesty that was Constantinople.

The unalloyed human impermanence
squeezed from every passing note contained
within the holy trinity of faith, hope and charity.
Love sustains the screaming pain of desecrated Aleppo.
Aleppo the beautiful, with churches known to all.
Built before the killing wind of the infidel
Blew out from the hot sands of Arabia.

Aleppo where Othello’s murder of a malignant, turbaned Turk
Foreshadowed the unholy trinity of Sunni, Alawite and Shia.
For orthodox Christians a veil of hurt in a land of tears.
Infidels rip up, and continue to destroy, two thousand years
Of the Greek Byzantines — the Christian Eastern Romans — Turks celebrate this terrible blasphemy, of…