Waiting for the barbarians is over:
As whiter shades of pale, pretty traces of lace,
Reveal in opal-luminosity these late Romans,
Their indigo-dream, red with gore on this bloody May Day
Arabian savagery negates their absorption into the timeless
Creation of Constantinople’s drift and swell,
Elysium’s perfumed garden of lucidity broken by
Mehmed’s Turkic desecration, his sweltering road to hell,
Friars digging stench-filled graves for Byzantium’s raped ladies;
Ragged monks drag the crucified down from St Sophia’s walls
As the muezzin calls the conquerors to triumphant prayer,
To answer deep-echoes of love’s sympathy for the devil
Culminating in these Transylvanian transformations:
Under the endless summer skies of holy Constantinople
Planes lengthen shadows above these steepling twin towers,
As  holy war resumes its darkest powers.