In commemoration of the fall of Kōnstantinoúpolis 29 May 1453

Photo by Fatih Yürür on Unsplash

Everything dies in time

Memories, birds in the trees,

That the old druid time

Plays such cruel deceptions

Creates such havoc in the mind

As we reach out and hope

To find somewhere human.

Sardonic wit, the sceptical glance,

The silent prayer,

Converge into this plea

Wear your learning lightly.

Reach out to Syrian and Lebanese

Assyrian, Druze, Maronite, Ezedi

Come, cross the same seas

That Homer once travelled.

Draw us into this web of separation

To kill or be killed by a man-created necessity.

Now in the torn wreckage of those

Bastions of Islamic scholarship:

Damascus, the ancient universities

Of Baghdad, these mosques of Constantinople,

That were once churches,

Where worshippers share poppies,

That have their roots in men’s veins,

Clinging to the ghosts of all those murdered Byzantines, again.