Mehmed the Conqueror
Gordon Jay Frost
How could he
order the stomachs
of ten gardeners
cut open in the search
for a missing cucumber
and then write
notes of longing
to a servant
in the misted mirror
of the palace bath?
How could he
make himself
so invulnerable
with hundreds
of castrati guards
and enslaved soldiers
and then contemplate with fear
rejection from one
his own edicts
declared could not
cast her eyes upon him?
How could absolute
power, no matter
how transitory,
absorb the mind
of the same person
wholly afraid
that his face and form
could repel the woman
who swept his floors?
I will never understand
those who would
wield power like gods
or those who would
bow down to them
even in their own
defense. But I can understand
how two people
could write notes to one another
asking that most basic
and eternal question:
Do you love me
as I love you?
Gordon Jay Frost studied at Interlochen and the University of Michigan and worked in the NEA literature program before embarking on a forty-year career in philanthropy. His poems first appeared in Contact II, Metier, and Washington Dossier, and, more recently, in Maryland Literary Review, Mad Persona, Soul Poetry, and Westward Quarterly.