sunset in Istanbul

by Ina Merdjanova

One of these rare translucent summer mornings,  

in my green balcony in a far-away northern city  

I will come to peace with the memory  

of you and me  

mesmerized by the crimson sunset over the Bosphorus,  

the domes of Hagia Sophia and Sultan Ahmet  

frozen in their separated sad magnificence,  

the syncopated calls of the muezzins stirring the air  

in melodic succession  

like prayer beads with the ninety-nine names of God,  

and dissipating before we can find our way around.  

Our sudden togetherness growing larger  

than the haunting silhouettes of the vanished empires,  

yet remaining painfully fragile  

to defy them.  

Ina Merdjanova is a Bulgarian-born researcher and author of five academic books on nationalism, religion, and politics in Eastern Europe. She published two poetry collections in Bulgarian in the 1990s and started writing poetry in English after she moved to Ireland in 2010. She is currently affiliated with Trinity College Dublin.