Aleppo
A poem, 1st draft, Summer 1904
Iskender Agha Boghos
Halab. Alep. Aleppo. City of Song.
Above a citadel
High in light
A mote flies
On zephyrous…song.
Iskender puts the pen down and reaches for his coffee. Cold. And perfumed with cardamom as they do here. He prefers it without but still forgets to tell anyone. Next time. He reaches for another cigarette, lights it and starts again:
Above a citadel, high in light,
A mote flies in on zephyrous song.
The warm sun floats it, and lilted song.
The flame of cooking, the languid wave…
no…
a languid wave…of hand…
Hand? Hand? Agh! So…pedestrian. Hands and feet have no place in poetry, Iskender thinks. He takes another drag and surveys his work. And there’s ‘song’ twice in two lines. He’s bad at this. A rotten poet. A rotten poet
