21 August 2008

Letter 3.9

[Letter 3.9]

Istanbul-Tehran, '66

Thunder Over Troy

Carriage horses clop along the cobbled streets of Chanakoy.
The hotel window, varnished by the rain, is two-toned: lights and black.
Electric blur of lights are broken rhythms to the lightning, envoy
of a past beneath my feet. I never felt my past would lack

a future till today I walked among the discovered stones of Troy
and cold and wet I searched but could not find a coin to take away
with me, and then I saw I really hadn't even past. Alloy
must be forged with care and circumspection to avoid decay.

I'll sleep beneath the thunder, huddled small. The word I speak destroy
as much, I'd like to think, and vainly seek confirming evidence
in poems but, in this room, cold beneath my depths, I have neither joy
nor home nor Homer, for my tale is one based on impermanence.

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