Hagia Sophia

You don’t sing anymore

your bells don’t ring on Sundays

and your icons don’t chant

when the dawn returns from its

　 walk in the dark

Byzantium is but the shadow of a whisper

that holds your hollow ghost like the dead hold 

　 their bones

your eyes are dry, for life has escaped

through cracks that were supposed

to show pilgrims parts of a heaven

　 that hoped to be yours

But suns set and moons rose,

so many of them that when people stopped counting

　 they thought it was an eternity

but you knew better,

the crescent holds no numbers,

no notes, no chimes

Yet, it peeled your name off of the surface of time 

　 – letter by letter

I saw them drip 

　 one by one 

like grains of sand through the tight throat of an hourglass

and stood wondering, if you’ll recognize it

　 when I sigh it to you

Instead, you shrink inside halos

Mary is childless 

Christ is without a cross

　 Who will be saved now?

I dreamt my great grandfather 

in front of your gates - weeping

his tears wet my eyes

his hands held my heart in his throat

and I heard the soil sob with souls

that wander through six hundred years 

　 of unsang troparions

then, I thought of the time

when God so loved the world that he gave 

　 his only son

Saint John couldn’t imagine

what God would do if he had to give 

　 his only daughter

Aida Bode is a Pushcart-nominated Albanian poet and writer, whose works have been published online and in print. Visit her website for her extensive publications.