If Not Now When?

You might have been an apparition

but if so then, so was I

As we walked the streets of Istanbul

under burnished Bysant skies.

We spoke in muted Cyrillic whisps

to replenish the poems we met

in Bulgaria last April.

And when we spoke of Yevteshenko in May,

on Crimean Steppes we wept.

“She weeping, and her friends weeping.

I, frightened, don’t feel like dancing.

But, you can’t not dance.”

But changed to Kurmanji out loud

When Istanbul’s fields we swept.

You taught me those languages

as I slept next to you.

I didn’t know them before.

The night was fragrant, stir

When we had our spiraling guests

of exotic steaming myrrh

and each the other’s breath.

We’d come to Ihsan’s Istanbul.

“Let’s go down to Ortokoy by the Bosphorus,” you said

In Ahnna-soaked eagerment.

You surprised me to know of those places.

I said, “Yes – if not now when?”

“I’ll feed you the most high fish,” you said,

“your tongue has ever known.”

Sang the ancient worn stones under our bare feet

“Welcome sweet Children of the West.

You are our Children now. We love you.”

Or wore we boots of Turkish trend?

Yes, were boots of Turkish leather

From Kusadasi town’s deep end.

Ottoman ghosts played liltly lutes

as we followed the alley’d days

They wore godly linen modern suits 

and spoke dazzling scholars’ ways.

But it must have been really

the Oud they played, from commaphora made

and tamborines carved from caravan wheels

and Princesses’ tangled bracelets heeled

all in the merry shade.

We vowed new positive habits

And wore white silk from that East.

Your wings became our transport

over Turkish turrets

“tottering crazy over its smoky columns

our eyes on the feast.”

So many strangers of that land

Surrounded and flooded us

with such unravelingly warm smiles,

and threw so many flowers

they covered the fountains’ tiles.

They danced around us, throwing powder

of unknown sacraments matter

calling us new holy teachers

important new Saints

in broken mistaken chatter.

We married under a giant willow

repeating words a priest bade us say:

“Your two lives will now be one

forever and a day.”

“Our two lives will now be one

forever and a day.”

And four striding gypsies carried us over

on a carpet of mythical appointments

ringed with jewels we could not ignore

to the river of annointments.

And forty more Romanys sang

Dallas and Ahnnah

forevermore.