Said Byzántion’s seer,* “Constantine will found,
Nova Roma, his new cosmopolis.
They’ll construct right here;
Then we Greeks will cheer
Rome’s second home: Constanti-no-po-lis.”

“In Rome’s legions march with a martial sound,
They’ll build Fourth Century’s eastern cosmopolis --
Grand Sophia’s dome,
And a huge Hippodrome
Rome’s second home: Constanti-no-po-lis.”

“Who’ll unite this Empire too vast to rule?
Few the Caesars who exert such might.
Year Three-Ninety-Five (395 A.D.),
Things take a permanent dive --
East/West will split; West drops out of sight.

“In clean-shaven West, ‘barbarians’ storm the gates,
Middle Ages will settle there to stay.
Vandals, Lombards, Goths –
Old stomping grounds get lost,
Down East here, ‘Roman’ power’ll hold sway.”

“Who will dogma craft for new Christian creed?
Peter’s primacy; Roman popes’ll.
We’ll counter Holy See
With Eastern Orthodoxy,
Here in Byzantine Constan-ti-nople.”

“Vicious wars with neighbours” quoth our sooth-saying seer,
Peering in his Prophet-Kit prism,
“Charlemagne and Popes
Will undermine our hopes,
And result in an East-West Schism.”

“Things take a bad turn with the Fourth Crusade,
Frankish knights, their mission quite hopeless --
Retake Holy Lands?
But no! They’ll change their plans,
Seize and ‘Latinize’ Constantinopolis.”

“Fifty years to rid the place of Latin louts
Then two centuries, invasions we’ll stop. All this
Has an end, it’s clear.”
States our seer, with tear,
"When Turks topple Constantinopolis.”

Then we took our seer out for lunch that day
To a small café by the Bosporus.
Name of the café
Where we ate that day,
Was ‘Istanbul' (Not Constantinopolis).

* the prediction was made by the Seer early in the fourth century A.D.