Byzantine Valentine

New windows open on
old spaces I had no idea
Apollo founded your city
just like Jamestown
Megara versus Athens
as in those days
all wars were local
and purely economic
no matter how many
Euclids there were
nor had I any idea where
Virgil stopped to die
of fever where Eupalinos
the engineer dug his
famous water tunnel
open at both ends
nor how the diatribes of
Bion of Borysthenes raged
on for how many summers
or the literary circle at the court
of Antigonus II Gonatas
nor that impiety is the
companion of credulity
avarice the metropolis
of vice nor that sorrow
is not cured by baldness
nor how much I love
to say those old names
over and over and to
conjure up those faces.