Ankara

White sculpted slabs from Rome or the Crusades
quilt the dustier Ottoman leftovers
of ramparts where kids chase us, shriek gavur*,
brandishing in our faces their wooden blades
and brazenly rummaging our pockets
for dollars. Mindful of those earlier armies,
my friend (a missionary) has learnt that tact's
the telling virtue for the Evangel here,
where machine guns guard the post offices.
Sadly amused, undeterred, he looks
where thirty-nine, new mosques stake Ataturk's
secular mausoleum. On carbon haze these swim
against the brass bright hills-of-the-moon where deer
and lion once drank from forest-lit stream.