Everything dies in time:

Memories, birds in the trees,

That old druid forgetfulness.

Time plays such cruel deceptions

Creates such havoc in the mind

I reach out and hope

To find somewhere human.

Sardonic, yes, witty, the sceptical glance,

The silent prayer, faded romance,

Converge into this plea:

Wear your learning lightly.

Reach out to Syrian and Lebanese

Assyrian, Druze, Maronite, Ezedi

Come, cross the same seas

That Homer once travelled.

Draw us into this web of separation

To kill or be killed by a man-created necessity.

Now, in the torn wreckage of those

Bastions of Islamic scholarship:

Damascus, the ancient universities

Of Baghdad, these mosques of Constantinople,

That were once churches, and will be again.

Where worshippers share poppies,

That have their roots in men’s veins,

Cling to the ghosts

Of all us murdered Byzantines, begin again.