Byzantium

Byzantium, your ancient city walls,
above the silent Bosporus at night,
before your many triumphs and your falls,
before the crawl like dying of the light
that Christendom delivered to your gates.
Could they have known, as Priam knew in Troy,
forewarned by those who traffic with the Fates,
man's appetite to subjugate, destroy,
is central to his being, to his creed?
As Zedekia, king of all the Jews --
he surely knew -- still made his kingdom bleed.
Nebuchadnezzar, when he heard the news,
he must have shook his head. Then sacked the city.
Walls seem to want to fall. Ah, more's the pity.