Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:A_dancing_girl_-_Hobhouse_John_Cam_Lord_Broughton_-_1813.jpg
Lord, set me a table in Byzantium: not the rose-colored queen of the Bosphorus, not the city of jeweled liturgies, but the drain where the scourings of empire collect. Give me a rough wooden bench and a goblet of thick southern wine that smacks of honey and dust in a tavern on some twisted lane away from the sea, where a plump dancing girl of uncertain antecedents clicks the reptilian scales of her castanets, her gaze weighing my limbs like dubious florins, while a one-eyed Cappadocian in the corner thoughtfully fingers his knife. Lord, I don’t ask for much, only a fate I can handle.
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