Smash your dreams, Constantinople
Hang a smile on your madness,
The 21th century calls you,
It yells, crouched in the darkness,
In front of your shattered faces,
That rattle their teeths,
Like the singing backwash
Of my memory
Your mosques ? I forgot their pomp,
Hagia Sofia endured too many times
The heavy footsteps of travellers
The tramway deviates from its course
In front of a cyan coloured mosque
And in a blazing blast
The housing speculations
Trigger protester upsurges
All theses tanks parked in front of
Your scintillating shops
Do they smell the roses of Orient
Or chewing-gum and then hell ?
Let’s not mention your white palacy
Its shadow goes slapping
The banks filled with dust
Of your Levant neighborhood
The world contemplates your billionaires
Dancing naked on the verge of
Swimming pools flowered with dollars,
Never burned down by the thunder ;
Your shady parcs are wiped out
Like ideas a bit too virgin
As soon as the northern wind sprinkles you
With its maritime breath
Stambul ! I forgot your vivid water,
Sliced in the paper of dreams
Under the bold chin
Of your bridges with hollow stomaches
Their lines dash off until the clouds
Let’s not talk about your wise water,
Byzantium with a past told too many times,
I shall come to the oiled shores
Of Bosphorus singing your song
My guitar makes up every feeling
I will narrate you deviating stories
My words are your admirers,
Like catamarans, at full speed,
I will talk to you about the future,
Oh Istambul, let’s not talk about it anymore
Let me just smoke in your streets
Unhook the clothes upon us
That hang under the balustrades
Istiklal avenue weeps their folly
But Taksim place is ours now
Ayse Kulin will join us
In the last train but not the last
For your broken city center
And we will cure our amnesia