The Fall of Edessa by Charles Eager

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Poet’s Biography
Charles Eager is a poet, short story writer, and critic, living in Emilia-Romagna, Italy. His writing appears in various outlets. He helps with editing the coterie journal DRANG, and he is founding editor of The Modena Review.

Poem Description / Inspiration
This is a lamentation for the fall of Edessa in 1144. The city was one of the oldest Christian places in the East; a legend in late antiquity held that Christ himself had written a letter to it. The poem imaginatively rebuilds it in its glory. It also reaches back (to Jeremiah) and forward in time to all those reft of a home and, more broadly, all who suffer loss, in all its variety. Despite the speaker's anger, it is a poem of sympathy for pain.

Poem Text
Weep. Weep all you about, you knights,
You kings and princes, you jongleurs,
Townsfolk and minstrels: weep all.
For Edessa is fallen, Edessa is gone.
Taken was she by the perfidious Turks
And we are all chucked out here,
Here on the barren street lamenting.
Here our hearts now long,
Long now, though short, for the walls,
The walls of Edessa great
Like a sea-proved vessel
To open to us her lovely portals,
To let in our sorrowing frames,
Bent double-over with weep-weariness,
To enter again and enjoy
The flooded market streets,
The gay bazaars, the shops,
The thousand little lives
That all made up sparkling Edessa!
Edessa whose streets were overhung
By fruits and vines and branches,
Edessa who had been noble in history,
Receiving even of a letter from the Lord:
How our hearts long for Edessa,
Like Jeremiah of old for the temple,
But no more. Weep. Weep for flown Edessa.