So Many Blood-Lakes

We have now won two world-wars, neither of which concerned us, we were
slipped in. We have levelled the powers
Of Europe, that were the powers of the world, into rubble and
dependence. We have won two wars and a third is comming.

This one--will not be so easy. We were at ease while the powers of the
world were split into factions: we've changed that.
We have enjoyed fine dreams; we have dreamed of unifying the world; we
are unifying it--against us.

Two wars, and they breed a third. Now gaurd the beaches, watch the
north, trust not the dawns. Probe every cloud.
Build power. Fortress America may yet for a long time stand, between the
east and the west, like Byzantium.

--As for me: laugh at me. I agree with you. It is a foolish business to
see the future and screech at it.
One should watch and not speak. And patriotism has run the world through
so many blood-lakes: and we always fall in.

poem by Robinson Jeffers
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Angina Pectoris

If half my heart is here, doctor,
the other half is in China
with the army flowing
toward the Yellow River.
And, every morning, doctor,
every morning at sunrise my heart
is shot in Greece.
And every night,c doctor,
when the prisoners are asleep and the infirmary is deserted,
my heart stops at a run-down old house
in Istanbul.
And then after ten years
all i have to offer my poor people
is this apple in my hand, doctor,
one read apple:
my heart.
And that, doctor, that is the reason
for this angina pectoris--
not nicotine, prison, or arteriosclerosis.
I look at the night through the bars,

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poem by Nazim Hikmet
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Hayal Kirikligi Sitmalari

Hayal kırıklığı
Sıtması tutuyor sık sık
Kalmak istemediğim halde bu şehirde
Oysa
Kaybettiğimi bile bile
Aynı filme giriyorum hep
Sonu farklı biter diye
Suare'de

İçimdeki sinemaların
Hoş kokulu fuayelerinde kaldı
On dakikalık aralarım
Aralıksız

Aralıksızdı ayrılırken
Gözbebeğimin tatlı ninnileri
Kulaklarımda
Kulağıma
Melankolik küpeler ısmarlayan
İmitasyon fısıltılar

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poem by Muzaffer Akin
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Questions From a Worker Who Reads

Who built Thebes of the seven gates?
In the books you will find the names of kings.
Did the kings haul up the lumps of rock?
And Babylon, many times demolished
Who raised it up so many times? In what houses
of gold-glittering Lima did the builders live?
Where, the evening that the Wall of China was finished
Did the masons go? Great Rome
Is full of triumphal arches. Who erected them? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Had Byzantium, much praised in song
Only palaces for its inhabitants? Even in fabled Atlantis
The night the ocean engulfed it
The drowning still bawled for their slaves.

The young Alexander conquered India.
Was he alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Did he not have even a cook with him?

Philip of Spain wept when his armada

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poem by Bertolt Brecht
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A Worker Reads History

Who built the seven gates of Thebes?
The books are filled with names of kings.
Was it the kings who hauled the craggy blocks of stone?
And Babylon, so many times destroyed.
Who built the city up each time? In which of Lima's houses,
That city glittering with gold, lived those who built it?
In the evening when the Chinese wall was finished
Where did the masons go? Imperial Rome
Is full of arcs of triumph. Who reared them up? Over whom
Did the Caesars triumph? Byzantium lives in song.
Were all her dwellings palaces? And even in Atlantis of the legend
The night the seas rushed in,
The drowning men still bellowed for their slaves.

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls.
Was there not even a cook in his army?
Phillip of Spain wept as his fleet
was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?

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poem by Bertolt Brecht
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Meandering

Meandering

The moon tonight looks like a golden gondola sailing on a black sea
only casting anchor at dawn. I remember a gondola trip in Venice
grey water, cabbage, onions and apple peels, I wished the gondolier
had been quieter. I sailed across the Black Sea once, from Georgia
To the Dardanelles, and sea was frosty white.
We anchored just outside Istanbul waiting for clearance, small boats
came sold us sweet wine and liqueurs. After an endless journey on
an old ship we drank too much and got sick, but for a few hours we
forgot about the poverty of our wretched life.
An endless voyage to Reykjavik, Iceland, the sea around the island
was dark blue. But the beer there was so insipid that we had no chance
to forget our misery. Moon, it has no business looking like a gondola,
it is a balloon. So bring in the empty horses; suave was David Niven
you couldn’t see he was acting his socks off.

poem by Oskar Hansen
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John Kantakuzinos Triumphs

He sees the fields that still belong to him:
the wheat, the animals, the trees laden with fruit;
and beyond them his ancestral home
full of clothes, costly furniture, silverware.

They'll take it all away from him—O God—they'll take it all
away from him now.

Would Kantakuzinos show pity for him
if he went and fell at his feet? They say he's merciful,
very merciful. But those around him? And the army?—
Or should he fall down and plead before Lady Irini?

Fool that he was to get mixed up in Anna's party!
If only Lord Andronikos had never married her!
Has she ever done anything good, shown any humanity?
Even the Franks don't respect her any longer.
Her plans were ridiculous, all her plotting farcical.
While they were threatening everyone from Constantinople,
Kantakuzinos demolished them, Lord John demolished them.

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poem by Constantine P. Cavafy
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Lady With A Lamp Light: Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale
laboured in Constantinople;
nursing surgical period
Crimean War casualties;
British soldiers treats
near on two weary legless years.

When weather worn
legendary embarking;
back to homogeneous
homeward climes;
when lady salient
wounds sapper took;
leave scented sanitary

supreme name
fame celebrity known;
prominent was
then heard spoken;
eminent upon lips

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poem by Terence George Craddock
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Elegy to a Kurdish father

Elegy to a Kurdish father
for Ekim Erdogan

Alone in a green meadow I pray,
not on my knees but hands held high.

I think of the Kurdish girl in the London fog—
her Baba is gone, the night has come.

Behind the East End walls a bluesy soulful note.
The cockney drink bitter beer, rattle and chat.

But she is not there, she is a continent away—

for the Sultans ruled from Constantinople to Budapest
from Medina to Algiers—

and in the muscle of the coffee the tendons of kabobs
there is a tone in her Baba’s voice, a light in a dark green forest.

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poem by Leo Briones
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Venice, November, 1966

With his head full of Shakespearean tempests
and old notions of poetic justice,
he was ready with his elegies
the day the ocean sailed into the square.

'The sea,' he wrote, 'is a forgiving element,
and history only the old odor of blood.
She will come to rest on the soft floor
of the world, barnacled like a great pirate ship,
and blind fish-mouthing like girls before a glass-
will bump, perhaps, San Marco's brittle bones.'

Pleased with these images, he paused
and conjured visions of a wet apocalypse:
the blown church bobbing like a monstrous water toy,
Doge Dandolo's bronze horses from Byzantium
pawing the black waves, incredulous pigeons
hovering like gulls over the drowning square,
mosaic saints floating gently to pieces.

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poem by Erica Jong
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The Barefooted Friar

I'll give thee, good fellow, a twelvemonth or twain,
To search Europe through, from Byzantium to Spain;
But ne'er shall you find, should you search till you tire,
So happy a man as the Barefooted Friar.

Your knight for his lady pricks forth in career,
And is brought home at even-song bunny'd through with a spear;
I confess him in haste - for his lady desires
No comfort on earth save the Barefooted Friar's.

Your monarch? - Pshaw! many a prince has been known
To barter his robes for our cowl and our gown,
But which of us e'er felt the idle desire
To exchange for a crown the grey hood of a Friar!

The Friar has walk'd out, and where'er he has gone,
The land and its fatness is mark'd for his own;
He can roam where he lists, he can stop when he tires,
For every man's house is the Barefooted Friar's.

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poem by Sir Walter Scott
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Some Dream of War

Rising in the shadows beyond the sun
Morning leaves like a silent memory
Burning pyre of Odin’s dream
Sacred sword
Knights fight the plague
Flagellants
Kings of order
Pillage the coffers of Constantinople
Aqueducts bring wine bright with blood
Crimean queens of the Black sea
Ships with ghost sails
Dadaists of surreal chance
Run for the fall out shelters
Teutonic steel horses blitzkrieg

There you are amidst the lost
Languorous myth amidst Hellene roses
Ideals in form and structure
Grace spoiled in the art of war
Under the pyramids

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poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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Belisarius

I am poor and old and blind;
The sun burns me, and the wind
Blows through the city gate
And covers me with dust
From the wheels of the august
Justinian the Great.

It was for him I chased
The Persians o'er wild and waste,
As General of the East;
Night after night I lay
In their camps of yesterday;
Their forage was my feast.

For him, with sails of red,
And torches at mast-head,
Piloting the great fleet,
I swept the Afric coasts
And scattered the Vandal hosts,
Like dust in a windy street.

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poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
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To Florence

Oh Lady! when I left the shore,
The distant shore which gave me birth,
I hardly thought to grieve once more
To quit another spot on earth:

Yet here, amidst this barren isle,
Where panting Nature droops the head,
Where only thou art seen to smile,
I view my parting hour with dread.

Though far from Albin's craggy shore,
Divided by the dark?blue main;
A few, brief, rolling seasons o'er,
Perchance I view her cliffs again:

But wheresoe'er I now may roam,
Through scorching clime, and varied sea,
Though Time restore me to my home,
I ne'er shall bend mine eyes on thee:

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poem by Byron
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Poems For Piraye (9 To 10 O’Clock Poems)

Remembering you is good
in prison
amid the news
of victory and death
as my fortieth year passes...

Remembering you is good
your hand
forgotten upon a blue dress
your hair
with the grave softness
of the earth of my beloved Istanbul.
This joy of loving you
is like a second person inside me...
The smell of geranium leaves
on your fingertips
warm and comforting
The invitation of your flesh
a hot
intense darkness

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poem by Nazim Hikmet
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Friends

As pretty as a song
A song could ever be
Like Christmas on a river
Without a boat or Christmas tree
This afternoon with you was something like a letter
The kind that someone writes but never sends
And when you look at me
You remind me that someday it's gonna end
And when you pass on
I bet you miss your friends
As simple as a breeze
Tugging hard upon the sail
Been moving through these streets forever
From Istanbul to Amsterdam
This afternoon with you was something like a letter
The kind that someone writes but never sends
And when you look at me
You remind me that someday it's gonna end
And when you pass on
God, I bet you miss your friends

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song performed by Ryan Adams
Added by Lucian Velea
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Blossoms of Karma

The creature twisted in choice
Pearls of beauty along the quay
Under every womb addiction
Horizons without suns
Moons of indigo incantations
She revels like a jaguar
Crucible friends drink fire
Night shares its doubts
These lit torches of arson
These choices banal as jealousy
Wars create immigrants

We visit Mozambique sculptors
Posterity shines like a demagogue
Broken abstract lines
Color your painting with incest
No return to those French cafes
Portugal fisherman in the deep waves
Narrow roads racing for Spain
Minions of apple trees

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poem by Joseph Narusiewicz
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On Hearing that Constantinople Was Swallowed Up by an Earthquake

[A Report, though false, at that time generally believed.]

Fallen are thy towers, Byzantium! towers that stood
Before the Turk's dread fury, when he came,
The crescent sparkling amidst Christian blood,
And to the reeking den of Moloch turned
Sophia's holy fane! Where, where are now,
Imperial city, the late proud remains
Of thy brave founder's greatness, when he clothed
In worldly grandeur pure Religion's form;
Then placed beside him, placed upon a throne,
The lowly Nazarene's meek simple child!....
He, wandering then upon a Christian land,
Stranger at home had been, nor known again
His artless rites, his followers, in the domes
Filled with the sparkling shrine, the rich-robed priests,
And pomp of earthly greatness........But not long
Lived there his name....Science and art, farewell!
The foe of light and love, Mohammed, comes,

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poem by Amelia Opie
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That Messianic Feeling

I am not waiting for a messiah
This is not a messianic age
Delightful though it is to live
Among nuclear devices primed
With climatic catastrophies
Set on automatic dial, and where
Ten million infant lives each year
Could quite easily be saved

But this is our collective will
Our tragic play in aggregate
Not providing proof of revelation
Or demanding divine arbitration,
The intervention of a saviour -
It's just the end, inexorable,
Of bad human behaviour

And there's no coming absolution
We'll have to deal with the mess we've made
And not be lazy or too proud

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poem by Frank Bana
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Big World

Looking over hong kong harbour
Throw a shrimp in yellow wine
Eat it when it ceases moving
Just before is fine too
There's an ancient chinese saying
Always seems to slip my mind
Does it really die with honour
Does it really matter
It's a big world - so much to do
Sitting on a beach in bali
Tried to reach and grab a cloud
Looked so much like cotton candy
And i'm feeling god-like
Could it be just what i'm eating
Only mushrooms after all
And with juice of avocado
I should live forever
It's a big world - so much to see much
Sitting on the floor in kyoto
Marvel at the latest catch

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song performed by Joe Jackson
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