Anything but “Exquisite Co”
 

Being a neophyte to this forum, I’m unsure how to do this, or if it is legit. The other day a phrase popped into my head that I can’t get rid of. It has too few rhymes that aren’t predictable, so making a “serious” poem eludes me. It is “Byzantine pajamas”, and I think it comes from an unofficial and technically very incorrect expression in Turkish that I heard from a Western friend applied to visiting pre-Conquest churches in Istanbul and beyond. Well, we all did that, and they are shabby but great. But what can I do with this shard? It’s banging around in my head and won’t quit. Is there a game?

This is hardly news, but pajama is a Hindi word, and we get the concept from the Ottomans:

https://fashion-history.lovetoknow.c...rigins-pajamas

So "Byzantine pajamas" seems a reasonably apt descriptor for a pre-Conquest church in Istanbul (like the Hagia Sophia).

Cheers,
John

C'mon! You've got over 100 posts in this forum, including six threads that you started.

At any rate...

Byzantine pajamas
adorned the hot mamas
who lined up to see ya
at the Hagia Sophia.

Michael, you continually reveal new features, because I see you are now numbering in binary rather than decimal. Binary 100 equates to decimal 4, which is pretty darn close to the total of my D&A posts. (Let’s add a zero and make it 1000 = 8? Not yet.) I’m proud that you learned binary at Cooper Union before it became computer-fashionable. Praise, where praise is right. Did I initiate six threads here? If so, time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like frozen yogurt.

John, the jama in pajama (I don’t really know—it’s my earworm) probably comes from Turkish “cami”, where a plain c is said like the j in jail (g in gaol). Cami means mosque, which these are surely not. Today they are museums, as they were in Soviet countries.

Michael, again, thanks for your thingy. It’s exactly the kind of thingy I didn’t want. But since I’ve given up, and since museums (maybe even Muslim museums) shouldn’t be cold, maybe it’s a good place to start. I might get back with something in your vein. Keep up your binary! Salud.

Hi Allen,

Your cami idea is interesting. I guess the Hagia Sophia remains technically a museum, but they have huge disks inside with the name of God on them, etc., and perhaps more importantly, a muezzin calls to prayer from the building five times a day. At least, at noon when I heard it more than once, echoed by the Blue Mosque in stereo. This was prior to Erdogan's abolition of such democracy as Turkey had.

Cheers,
John

I especially referred to the little domed ones on back streets too. Ramshackle when I lived there for some months. Cheap to enter. Maybe I can disguise myself as a Phanariot to justify the pjs. It’s high time I read the Rules for D&A. And to check my Forum submission stats for this Forum. And brush up my Shakespeare and hexadecimal. “Hot mamas in pajamas.” Albeit verily true, that’s not the best way characterize my spouse in my house in public. Not for long and in this decade. Modesty makes waves. Off to read the Forum Rules and Desiderata.

Your phrase reminded me immediately of the Vita Sackville-West poem that begins

She was wearing the orange taffeta trousers
Someone had brought her from Isfahan

And I can only suggest that you write one beginning

She was wearing the pink Byzantine pajamas
Someone had brought her from Trebizond.

Ah, yes, Gail. Though I remember them as coral trousers and that poem as one of the most erotic in the English language. Woo me, Allen, with your pink pyjamas; I am Vita's until you do.

Ann, while researching V S-W’s ‘Full Moon’ poem, I found that this forum isn’t protected, and that “wooing” you would be as public as wooing a charmer in a large department store street display window. Besides, I know that your heart belongs to Robert Graves (of ‘The Persian Version’). We might be great friends, but never sweethearts, probably, even if you wore Persian silks. I could never cuckold the author of ‘I, Claudius’ and ‘Belisarius’! There is honor among some of us men still. Yet, as John Paul Jones supposedly said, “I have not yet begun to fight”. Byzantium, weird and barely holy at the top as it often was, used Greek letters to write in (αβγδ...). If you want to woo me, by contrast, brush up your Aeschylus. No Russian this week, please. Καζαντζακις? Meh. You could try something by Atticus to Cicero. Or Philodemus.

Sir, your reference to Robert Graves is incontrovertible evidence that you have been tinkering with my juvenilia. Any further intercourse between us is therefore out of the question.