I. 
Through the shattered walls, surge the horde,
Unstoppable, innumerable, deadly they stream forward,
All crumble and fall before their ferocious surge, 
The urge for blood, blood lust, blood purge,
Claret red courses through the streets, 
as they run for life, spilling, sliding, slipping,
Hideously screaming Constantinople’s funeral dirge. 

Fear beyond fear grips the collective mind, 
The host of hell are here, dark satanic,
nowhere to cower,
Slavery, death or plucking of maidenhood’s flower,
The noble ladies weep for a Christian sword to sheer
their head,
A purer salvation than to serve the Janissaries’ bed. 

Blind panic, blind faith, all blind;
blindly they stream to the sepulchral dome,
Still they hope prophesy’s salvation to find,
Clinging, clutching and clawing at the holy tome,
All false, all ashes as the great door splinters and crashes,
as malice and avarice in the defilers’ eyes brightly shined. 

The holy relics are tortured and smashed,
The one cross, the true cross, shattered and lost,
The crown of thorns, prickly torn and tossed,
into the funeral pyre, 
Alexandria scrolls of Aristotle and Homer but fuel to wanton fire,
An orgy of savagery and desire.

Weeping daughters torn from mothers, virgins and nuns torn
from the alter,
Priests and fathers spared no quarter, all torn, all forlorn,
As chattel and cattle led to their slaughter,
The spoils of war to pilfer and pawn. 

II. 
As it started now it stops, the great Sultan off his horse falls,
Striding into Saint Sophia, he commands for all the faithful to hear,
At the highest tower the Muezzin calls, 
God’s words capture and enthrall,
This pious event, this fateful day,
This blessed and bloody twenty ninth of May. 

III.
All is still, all silent, terror begets a terrible silence,
Only the carrion crow caw disturbs the desolate scene, 
A thousand years washed away, 
A few hours of violence, all gone, utterly gone, 
The haughtiest civilization, now lowly desolation, 
The dead echo haunts the palace of the Caesars,
The blood red sun sets and weeps, 
God has gone, God has come.