Continuing the poetic theme....I have always wanted to visit Istanbul or Constantinople.... remembering the playground riddles of seventy plus years ago
"Constantinople is a very big word. If you can't spell it you're a very big dunce"
Then, I had no idea where Constantinople was and, even if I had, I had no idea of travelling to it. It was a place like Timbuktu, or Timbuctoo as I would have spelt it. A story book city with a long name.
Now, the world has shrunk.
Now, I can travel wherever I wish.. almost. Only Time is against me now so, like Yeats...
...therefore I have sailed the seas and come to the holy city of Byzantium.
We flew but the destination was the same.
Istanbul pulsates with vigour. Everyone seems to be on the move, like a human ant nest or beehive. The traffic is unbelievable, a constant stream of vehicles filling every street and lane and roadway, all going to...where?
The monuments of its the magnificent past sit unperturbed amongst the bustle.
The Hagia Sophia and Blue Mosque are as serene as when they were built. Unlike the poet, they are secure in their state and status...
Monuments of unageing intellect
We sailed across the Bosporus from Europe to Asia and drank Turkish tea.
We walked round the Hippodrome of Constantine the Great where charioteers had steered their horses round an incredibly tight circuit like Charlton Heston in the movies but for real. We marveled at the obelisk of Thutmose III, already three thousand years old when it was brought to embellish Constantine's city and its carvings as fresh as the day some long forgotten Egyptian craftsman with a copper chisel and wooden mallet created them. A monument not to some Pharaoh but to the man who made it.
Yeats seemed to be searching for a means to achieve an after-life in art.
to be gathered into the artifice of eternity
The humble stone mason achieved it more than three millennia before him.
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