Journey with Dante

  A courtyard of an old mosque in Bursa, Water running from the fountain. A wall standing since Orhan’s time A maple tree of the same age; Spreading the calm of the day in all directions. And the sorrow of being fragments of a dream… There is something smiling at me A memory coming from a peaceful place… Greenfields with blue skies And the holiest of buildings     Everything named after past victories Capturing eternity in a single moment. Where magic still lives on from days bygone. In every stone, there are remnants of that happy dream. Serenity, Nostalgia flooding my heart Gumuslu, the victorious morning Muradiye, the reward of perserverance… White lilies symbolize my life Tombs, mosques, gardens… The noble story of thousands of soldiers… The noise of war’s thunder going up to the sky… Tells the story to every passer-by   Bursa sleeping in the bosom of a dream every night. Every morning it wakes up with the...

  Hog Butcher for the World,    Tool Maker, Stacker of Wheat,    Player with Railroads and the Nation's Freight Handler;    Stormy, husky, brawling,    City of the Big Shoulders: They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys. And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again. And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger. And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them: Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning. Flinging magnetic curses amid the toil of piling job on job, here is a tall bold slugger set vivid against the little soft cities; Fierce as a dog with ton...

Now she who shares the bed of old Tithonus, abandoning the arms of her sweet lover, grew white along the eastern balcony; the heavens facing her were glittering with gems set in the semblance of the chill animal that assails men with its tail; while night within the valley where we were had moved across two of the steps it climbs, and now the third step made night’s wings incline; when I, who bore something of Adam with me, feeling the need for sleep, lay down upon the grass where now all five of us were seated. At that hour close to morning when the swallow begins her melancholy songs, perhaps in memory of her ancient sufferings, when, free to wander farther from the flesh and less held fast by cares, our intellect’s envisionings become almost divine— in dream I seemed to see an eagle poised, with golden pinions, in the sky: its wings were open; it was ready to swoop down. And I seemed to be there where Ganymede desert...