Istanbul, August 1999

Why am I here
with a deprecating dictionary
a red crescent cover
watching an Ottoman sunrise
weaving its nectar
from bones and carcasses
trembling like spiders
crushed from rock.

Here the survivors
trace the disaster's bones
in final historical acts
and in my tiny book
sighing from my poems
running out of words
from the moonlit ash
the numbers of death
crowd your imagination
nowhere to go until sunset,
an archaeologist reports.