The Lattices

I know the varicolored Trebizond

and other towns of Anatolia,

but no port’s water is more brilliant,

no views give richer hues to feast upon,

and no horizon is so mosque-bejeweled

as in the city where the years flown by,

all gone in other quarters, haunt the sky

and fade like a salubrious parasol

in the industrial sun’s unyielding shine…

Just look – these lattices of startling bronze,

skillfully woven into blossoms fine,

have to the tender reader’s eye disclosed

the lives once lived here – beautiful, unkind:

a heavy flight through layers and layers of time.