Ode to ancient Lisboa (Alis Ubbo)
O Alis Ubbo, where once Phoenician traders anchored up and down your maritime shores.
Their oars skimming, eyes searching, moneybags awaiting.
Quietly settling and trading from the shelter of the Tagus —
before the cacophony of Romans, Greeks, Carthaginians, and Moors followed your footsteps.
O Alis Ubbo, your safe harbor bustling with footsteps from ancient foreign tongues —
much as it is today — alas… grieve.
Grieve for who, for what?
What shelters you from the masses descending onto your maritime shores today?
O Alis Ubbo, I drink up your essence late into the night.
I roam your labyrinth neighborhoods like a phantom searching out your ancient harbor for a soothsayer to cast my fortune with a roll of the dice.
Following relics, stealing glances with only a sliver of moonlight to witness.
Listening for echoes of past foreign tongues bringing stories from unknown oceans. Merchants negotiating wares from your Maritime Tin and Amber Routes.
I wait in the shadows ready to steal your secrets along with your golden bounty.
To entomb them in written word as insects entombed inside your amber. MY word. My foreign tongue.
Ode to Alis Ubbo, mortal elder, surviving such calamities as earthquakes, empires, crusades. And for what?
Surviving the tides of change brings forth today’s calamities.
Are you patiently waiting out this current wave of digital noise?
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