It was a bird who brought the news
Of the fall of our city.
Its impregnable walls breached
Its streets and palaces running
With Christian blood. 
You'd rather freeze than be conquered
I will freeze in another sea.
Another city will be better for me.
So many late-Roman artefacts smashed
The sultan prays east, not west
Our death sentence is written˙
and my heart is dead and buried.
This withering will last centuries
Until St Sophia's cathedral of Divine Wisdom
Is declared a mosque. .
Wherever I look, I see ruins.
Nothing good will come of this
Occupation, they want us gone. 
Genocide awaits us. 
And the west does nothing.