Beige hills turn ochre, then orange, then umber
in the fading twilight over the Sea of Marmara.
Four turrets turn to silhouettes and sing
ululations, the call to prayer facing East.
Two girls step off a ferry, their week-long journey
to the most ancient of histories is ending.
Everywhere their third-world-crafted boots
found traction was a battle-field; the ruins
of nine Troys, the crusade walls of Sultanhamet,
the sharp hills of Suvla Bay. They’ve stood
on battle fields and watched the Turkish men
selling Cassandra’s tapestries for five dollars a piece.
In the temple to wisdom they’ve seen
faceless seraphim above the Arabic Allah,
scripts of Mohammad, and the ghosts of saints
beneath worn yellow plaster, remnants
of a battle between sibling religions with
no mother for mediation.
In the straights they see a battleship.
Its guns seem to aim at the space between them;
soon the war to the South-East will widen it,
but these girls shed their nationalisms like Salome’s scarves.
They’ve shared a week of ruins, and move
together through the city in the birthplace of mankind.
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