Raki at Bešiktaš

Not unlike Provence, this sheen off a sea
ferries gouge jagged furrow wakes into,
a warped metal sheet whose irridescence
showers blind spots among protein floaters,
so radiant the glare. Or the graveyard
at Aşiyan Asri, a real Père Lachaise,
its luminaires – among them poets
I shall never read – mouldering under slabs
whose script needs parsing to comprehend.

Now here at Bešiktaš at the bar my gaze
falls upon the gauzy film raki sloughs off
crisp facets of ice, billowing veils within
a tumbler in whose cloud can be divined
not diaphanous future but past murk.
Suppose raki had flowed before pastis,
the Bosphorus come before my original Seine.
Would I not then be able to decrypt
those epitaphs graven on tumbled stones?