By Ishmael von Heidrick-Barnes
NEW STATE OF BEING
The first time
i heard the call to prayer
Nicosia’s Venetian walls
melted into mosaic pigments
colors bleeding into anonymity
The first time
i heard the call to prayer
i was released
from a prison of architectural semantics
Carried
above lilting cities of clouds
Tongues of minarets and belfries
pointing above deserts
dissolving echoes
Light’s thermal wave
lifting me peacefully
into a new state of being
Author’s note: Nicosia is referred to as the last divided capital in Europe. I was walking in the South side of the city when I heard the call to prayer echoing over the UN patrolled no man’s land from the occupied Turkish north into the Republic of Cyprus.