Buyuk Londra

for Piers

I see you still

in the Londra Hotel,

charming the parrots

with your polly-phonic skills,

conjuring times before travel was tamed,

when Stamboul trains disgorged magnates and spies,

poets and femmes fatales,

into Sirkeci Gari.

The crowd at the bar practise lines

for parrots to recite

among the fading prints: Old Pera

and the Bosphorus; gilt and Edwardiana.

Your laughter fills the space that language lacks;

gazing up from a glass at cocktail hour,

reflections intact, despite the years:

shaken not stirred.