The Fall of Istanbul

In memory of the dead & injured from the earthquake

Byzantium, Constantinople, Stamboul,
Istanbul, Old World around the Pera Palace,
where bookshops and poets are,
Elegance walked, and supped.
Across, the beautiful Marmara,
where fish are picked and grilled openly,
under the crescent moon,
with a backdrop that not even the greatest
painter could imagine, Sophia, Topkapi.

That's the setting for this earth-shaking,
Death-rattle roar from the underworld,
Where Orpheus, and the boatman all sojourn,
now no more chai is poured in joy,
only sorrow's cup is filled,
and the backdrop is a tent.

On the seventeenth day
of August, Nineteen Ninety-nine,
or as they say in Istanbul
the early morning after
the ceremonies of Haci Bektas Veli,
Anma Toreni, Agustos.
the earth fell in at two minutes past three.

Istanbul and its surrounding mystery,
are swallowed by the Marmara Sea.
Yalova, where special toffee could be bought,
Istanbul, where morning streets awake in the sun,
to echoes of the Muslim's prayers.
Golcuk a name of tragedy.

Hotels sway from side to side,
parks are filled with nighttime fear.
O beautiful city, rocked city,
fourteen thousand and rising, dead,
thirty-five thousand and rising, injured,
tens of thousand, and rising, missing.
You were wrecked by a statistic
of seven point four on the Richter scale.
This was not an ancient doing,
it was nineteen ninety-nine.

Even a spokesman, beyond Delphi,
that ancient enemy, Hellas,
in coming first with help,
spoke like the Sphinx,
'Tragedy has no enemies'.
Akshamlar, canim, Ystanbul.