None of us will survive,
but we must try again to strive
to seed some fallow earth
with the mysteries of the Byzantines
with their mirth,
even amidst the agonies of birth, and death,
the accidental revelations,
of our passing on the wing,
listen to the voice that will always sing
of the fall of Constantinople:
of the mysteries of impermanence
of every passing note
of songs echoing the holy trinity of faith, hope and charity.

Divine love that sustains us
against the screaming pain of desecrated Aleppo.
Aleppo the beautiful, with churches known to all.
Aleppo where Othello’s murder of a malignant, turbaned Turk
foreshadowed the unholy trinity of Sunni, Alawite and Shia.

Ours is now a veil of hurt in a land of tears,
among this infidel horror that ripped up a thousand years
of the Greek Byzantines — of the Eastern Romans —
of the Romani
the slaughter continues to appall, this terrible blasphemy,
that first infected the world on the 29th of May 1453
made manifest again in New York and Washington.
We need another rendering of the veil,
holy war writ in blood down palace walls.,