Again, we set sail for Byzantium
Defaced by the Turks
Who have spent 500 years wiping out
Every trace of our 1500 year occupancy here
In Constantinople...
Our voyage will be a long one
Full of adventure, full of discovery.
Covering much time and space
Yeats set out but never arrived
His spirits flagged:
But St Sophia waits!
Surrounded as it is by minarets
This cathedral for all the Orthodox
Of the East was built by us when Rome
Still thrived and all your thoughts will
Be raised high as the cross that once sat
So equably above St Sophia’s dome.
Rare excitement will stir your soul and body
As you draw close to the heart of Byzantium.
We were defaced first by western pig-crusaders
Who knew as little of civilization as did the Seljuk
Turks. Both would kill a child to save their skins.
Byzantine ethics are from Aristotle and
The Athenian school. We connected modernity with
Antiquity. We carry our philosophy in our souls.
The voyage is a long one and we may not survive.
On many a summer morning you may wish to stop
At Lesbos or Crete to enjoy the sun and have some fun
You may stop at Phoenician trading stations
To buy fine things: jewels and ebony and ivory.
But why? You never will return home.
Instead you must gather rare erotic knowledge
And plough on to the holy city of Byzantium.
Keep Byzantium always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years, decades, a whole lifetime,
So you, too, are old and have garnered
Wisdom from your travels to Constantinople.
 A holy city for the Greeks and it was the Greeks
Who made us in the west what we are, when we are
At our best.
If you find her, poor old Constantinople, misnamed
By such an ugly un-Byzantine name as Istanbul
And occupied by a foreign people: do not be concerned
History is long, and, we, the Greeks, know that many things
Are contained within the wide and ample lap of the gods.