The Last Castle of Kemal

Sing, O Muse, of the journey home to İzmir’s shores,
Where the sun paints the sky and the Ionian roars.
To the last castle of Kemal, we make our ascent,
Where clarified butter scents the air, heaven-sent.
The hillside sleeps, untouched by mortal tread,
Yet, it echoes the song of the ancient bard, long dead.

To the last castle of Kemal, through streets that groan,
With the weight of machines, the city’s relentless metronome.
Yet beneath the cacophony, the sacred Meles flows,
Carrying whispers of heroes where the Ionian breeze blows.
The blue shutters guard memories, a home near the sea,
Where the past and the present merge eternally.

To the last castle of Kemal, the cicada calls,
Its cry, piercing sage and bougainvillaea on sunlit walls.
The summers of youth, now adrift in the stream,
Are summoned anew in the fabric of dreams.
Friends lost to time gather once more in shade,
As the earth sighs beneath the bond we’ve made.

To the last castle of Kemal, over Hadrian’s stones,
Where the path of the ancients is carved into bones.
Turquoise vistas unfold, boundless and vast,
Where ships sought Troy, their sails taut with the past.
A conqueror’s vision etched deep in the tide,
Yet the shores hold the truth of the dreams that abide.

To the last castle of Kemal, where shadows run,
As tagged dogs torpor beneath August sun.
Once let free by Alexander’s decree,
Now lost to the tides of a shifting sea.
Homer’s roads, where verses soared,
Now hawk their wares, their soul outpoured.
The double-bleating dolmuş winds its way,
Through the echoes of a long-lost golden day.

To the last castle of Kemal, on the Aegean wave,
We dance with the ghosts of the bold and the brave.
Orlov’s wrath looms where the fleet once lay,
The Sultan’s empire’s last breath swept to ruin’s dismay.
Yet even as the march sun culls stray lives,
The spirit of İzmir endures; it survives.

So sing, O Muse, of this homecoming sweet,
To the last castle of Kemal, where all journeys meet.
The hills, the stream, the boulevards wide,
All call to the wanderer to rest by their side.
In the land of Ion, beneath Homer’s gaze,
We find our refuge through time’s winding maze.