A lamentation upon the fall of Constantinople 29 May 1453
St Sophia's a Christian cathedral for over 1000 years, now a mosque by order of sultan Erdogan
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 29th of May 1453.
Unholy war on 911 in New York and Washington.
another rending of the veil,
unholy war writ in blood down tyrants’ walls,
reveals depths of mans’ abominations, miseries and regrets.
Then we fuse them together
Into the delicious harmonies of art
Note succeeding note,
Stroke succeeding stroke,
Word succeeding word
Showing us the whole~
Then tearing us apart.