Lord, set me a table in Byzantium:
not the rose-colored queen of the Bosphorus,
not the city of jeweled liturgies,
but the drain where the scourings of empire collect.

Give me a rough wooden bench
and a goblet of thick southern wine
that smacks of honey and dust
in a tavern on some twisted lane away from the sea,

where a plump dancing girl of uncertain antecedents
clicks the reptilian scales of her castanets,
her gaze weighing my limbs like dubious florins,
while a one-eyed Cappadocian in the corner
thoughtfully fingers his knife.

Lord, I don’t ask for much,
only a fate I can handle.


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