A LAMENT FROM A FAR
- For Rafaelina -
It is like a flickering candle light, your brunette smile...
Mournful and proud
And prudent...
Ours is a deep loneliness stuck to fishnets
Your nameless escape is my bait, no waste
From distances, unreachable even if we set the birds free,
We came to far away countries, yet trapped in love...
In the night, a wind chime...
Listen...
A forest is burning within me and a roaring watermill,
an earthquake
ebullient...
The wind is singing songs for my bewildered smile
And with all your light you are within me
I already forgot my past kisses
Come on, come.
Here I am, I love you
My weariness is because of your distance...
13 January 2012
New York
It Is Not Worth Living It Is Not
Sitting down, with Anatolian dialect,
I lamented for gods’ tears
Without getting lazy
Kur(d)i hicazkar*
In the gray houses with blue windows
Grieves got to long for the mornings
Lots of younameit flowers have been piled up
The eyes of the rag doll, raised in an empty cradle,
Became all coral because of crying
And she presented her patience to her lord
Then threw up her kept quietness
A crooked shadow I became, on my reflection
Upon where my wet whistle is reflecting now
I am in a wrong spring
I feel like dying
*Kurdi Hicazkar: A “makam” in classical Turkish music, founded by Haci Arif Bey.
The One Stayed Behind
Come be a guest in my heart I said
I came
You sang soulful songs to my ear
Did you say rose or sapling?
For how long I have not stopped by here
How so many things have changed except the color of your voice
Stop, don’t bustle right away
There is a lot of time yet before the twenty four* bus
The children too are not yet asleep maybe
Well, you were to tell many things?
Let it not be a broken melody
That you harp on, on your lips
Here I came, come on tell me
Please, don’t be quite like that
Your eyelashes are also getting cloudy
Although we run after time screaming
Still some things are staying behind
Listen
Scorpions are also crying, can you hear?
* “Twenty four” is used as twelve am, midnight.
Irony
I.
Leaving gothic pains behind
Stayed on the table, the rose
With a tear drop.
II.
And she was quite, time was paused
In Marseille
An amateur murder was being committed
I was killing my self
Atilla Ilhan* was getting angry at me
I was coming and closing my eyes
III.
And it was dragging on like this
The murders at the boulevard
It Is Whatever You Want
Who would buy my second hand sorrows
What shall I do with my self now
Who underlined my bewilderment
In this hell called earth
But who
Which life would carry my drunk grievances
My orphan-hood that cannot make it to the morning
Which ointment would be good for my vanished loves
I left to the sea
The ashes of the love that I burned with my hands
And I ignored whatever there is
This cascade will drown me too anyhow
In this city full of whores and minarets
With its hooks, dancers, gypsies
I Apologize
We neither did train travels
To distant stations with you
Nor throw pretzels to pigeons
From the Tower of Leander
At midnight interrupting our sleeps
With our sweaty and salty bodies
We did not make love till the early morning
Even if you cannot gather back the water
You poured after me*
The path ended the journeys did not
I have to say farewell to this love
*Traditionally, when someone is going on a trip the ones that stay behind would pour water after the person, so that the trip would be completed easily with no accident, like flowing water.
Condolence
I shattered
The monastery we have weakened
If I knew the touches are pregnant with deaths
Would I have gone to Elia’s desert
While propagating a love in Maveraunnehir*
Neither Dicle* remained nor Nil*
I ignored my arrogance by causing pain
And I am not looking back
At the ruins I left
The one you told to stop two meters away, me
What could I have done
Other than leaving this town
*Maveraunnehir: Transoxania
*Dicle: Tigris
*Nil: Nile
Some People Are Crying
I am coming from a city that has lots of whores
From the bosom of playful lovings
Void: Un-experienced-ness!
A woman is crying for herself in the distance without me
A black kid is laughing at himself in the distance quietly!
Unending Tragedy
Amber yellow thyme loneliness this town is
Why is darkness setting in abruptly
The streets become orphan men, whore women
Tangent to life passed openly a vase
While my shadow was in revolt, my patience was in frost
For its miscarried loves this city cries
I could not bring any dream to an end
I always stood against life, a little crooked
I did not present my passport in custom gates
Rebellious and roughneck intrinsically portable
I don’t have an address, say I am a wind
I betrayed all the colors
And mostly the white
Now beginning of which poem I was at
While smiling within me Africa loneliness
This poem too I cannot finish
Say I never wrote
10/03/07 URFA
Pacta Sunt Servanda
I was like a solitary city
On the shadow of the sunk ship
Waves hit my heart
My Arab
I hang on the void of a vegetative loneliness
My picture in the frames with crumbled memory
The photographer of the abandoned city
Shoots himself on and on
Shoots his city
Wall
All walls look alike my beloved
And surely converge into the sea all the rivers
In the well with a dark light
I set my seal to you
All walls look alike my beloved
Under the infinite sky
In the time you collected and finished
I set my seal to you
All walls look alike my beloved
Lies and mourning kiss
On your pair of broken wings
I set my seal to you
All walls look alike my beloved
With the sorrow on your face
I washed and came from the watersides
I set my seal to you
All walls look alike my beloved
Accompanied by a burning folk song
When the moon hangs on the branches
I will take back my seal my beloved…
Single Loneliness
The moonlight got lost in the dictionary of the night
I could not make of the departure of the rivers
Where are the birds
When the acacias turn white
I lean forward and give water to the pots
Under the orphan eaves
At the piazzas I left my youth
My plural kissings
I was poor,
From my wounds and tomorrows
Escaped from solitary orphanage
I made love too, no lies.
To whichever station I arrived there was a solitary shadow behind
Coming from the vanished rivers in the most crowdedness of my loneliness
You are absent
I passed the seas with a contrarian whistle
What time what calendar is it
I do not know my name, I do not have a duplicate
Would you participate in my sin?
Each love leaning on lies can be made bleed by a poem only
Whenever you come to my mind, there is a downfall suddenly
Bring Me A Sea
Come on bring me a sea
Let's also say a wind that comes with the desolate rain
Who were we Naciye
Which wound is bleeding, bleeds in our memories.
Haven’t you said, many trains came to this town Naciye
Returning and returning from the addictive loneliness
Were we Naciye
Which equations we lost our selves in
Ah Naciye did you tie your eyes with your hair
I returned from my mistakes, here
Hold the hands of my questions
Hold, so that an ocean may rise within me
May a leaf grow slowly quietly at night
With drunken curses I roam around town in the mornings
Moldy nicotine in my mouth lots of garlic
Roaming around in circles within my loneliness
I leave my crumbs to the pigeons
Now whoever I greet
A contrarian full moon dies on the tip of my whistle
Can a tree sleep under its own shadow Naciye
In faceless neighborhoods
I have novice smiles Naciye that cannot fit into anywhere
That is the reason for my anger towards May, September has no guilt; believe none
What about our indecencies, our indecencies I say
The world is too tight for our indecencies
Whose guest is this silence Naciye
I cannot live in this town anymore
I am leaving, here Naciye
Just so you would not make me bleed through my wounds
A Journey Into The Past
To Master Fevzi Gunenc
He brought a big tray of Balcan Kabab*
With red wine to the table brother Fevzi
It is Russian wine, not like women, he said smiling
Then the doctor came out of nowhere
I am sick he said while perching on a corner
“How many times we told you to see a doctor”
We cheered up and cheered up
From Ziba Street* Ercument Ucari came suddenly
In his hands some raki, moreover from Tekirdag
He is resentful to Cemal Sureya again, muttering and muttering
Just when we dive into Balcan and wine
Faik Baysal appeared at Dirina Bridge*
Broke the bank from Red Monday
(He whined on how he does not have a decent study room in his big palace with many rooms)
We hit the wine
Tarik Dursun K. could not come from Izmir
He sent a message, saying
Tell her that I love her,
With the old friend that comes at night
To start the tomorrow, said Teacher Afsar Timucin,
With his usual calm voice and
Told the history of philosophy
Would Hancerlioglu stop,
He took thinking reed to his hands
Called the history of thought
While brother Gungor Gencay was laughing like spring
We were just to talk about Zubeyde
“You always made her cry like that” Brother Fevzi said
“Your eyes were weaving roses”
“At love sorcerers” “Burning the Rose” is no good, I was to say
Just when I was gulping
Who came suddenly, while waiting for whom with poems
I was waiting for Bilge however
While Makbule was valuable
Got lost suddenly in blue
The night ended
And I don’t know why I make love with Naciye
Every night, how many times, many times
I understood that the morning came
S.Urfa-Balikgol
*Balcan kebab: An eggplant kebab from Antep.
*Ziba Street: A book of poems by Ercument Ucari
*Dirina Bridge: Faik Baysal wrote a war documentary novel called "The Last Day in Dirina"
*The names appearing in this poem belong to renowned Turkish writers, poets and thinkers.
Lamentation For The One Who Left
Daily things however my tales were
I was always in foreign cities a man with tired beard
I was beautifying the flowers with my hands
With the winds I brought from Toros Mountains
From which ruined tribes you came from that
I put together legal banquets for your shame to be erased
And how many times you left nettle and rhubarb pain on my skin
How many at times you spied on* my doors
While leaving your semen to your own grave
And there is no streets* left that you can go to
Turn again and again
And snow fell on the acacias
The full moon was absent
*Spy on: The original word used is "Annaklamak" which is a word commonly used in Black sea region.
*Street: The original word used is "Kuce", which is a word commonly used in Diyarbakir area.
Lights Turned Off
Whenever I go on a journey
Perfidious daggers are stabbed in my back
By a leprous woman
Who does not even have eyes
Leaving the doors open for revenge
She goes away tearing off
The closet cover
For having oyster patterns
I tamed my rebellious love
Will not be watched any longer
The black and white movies on the receiver
I closed my doors with padlocks
And I ignored things left behind after her
Benjamins dried, died Ciklets*
Bangos* already was miffed at the rooftops
Died the love
Smiled the kid accompanied by melodies
While looking for his mother
15/4/2007 Diyarbakir
*Ciklet: A kind of fish
*Bango: A kind of pigeon seen in Istanbul.
I Am Going
My childhood was like distant train travels
I left my loneliness in an autumn
I was looking for full moon, defeated and calm
When I was both the culprit and slain of a love
Like fire ground my banquets were
Darkening my fuliginous loneliness
In distant cities
Love came over and over me
The wind was standing like a threat
In its rebellious whistle’s exuberance
A deserted rain was crying for itself
I saw my executioner in the mount of a scythe
From black and white albums spreading around
Whereas many dead there were on the posters
How many questions I answered in my life
How many of my questions remained unanswered?
No it is not a rusty nagant on my temple
Betrayals in my pocket
I am going, to walk another city
Envying the old butterflies…
Life Is An Illusion
Was the coincidence the name of a love, or proliferations
While my solitude was abandoned in grief
A bronze love was born, cesarian
Ey ex-beloved
Your greetings came from Kagizman*
With an envelope assuming itself a letter
Who is the one dying, no no who is the one dying?
Ey my close relatives in distance
I buy loves that ended up in the second hand bookstores
Saying, which love would be repeated
Again I bought bronze loves
While being infested with fleas in the flea market
To Beyoglu theaters
While it was snowing in the dark
Ah these Istanbul rains how shy they are.
*Kagizman: A town and district of Kars.
On The Roads
Ey Dicle* Ey turbid faced rebellious girl
I released through five different veins
To your cold skin the fishnets
For you to flow through my arms curving
On the Fiskaya Bridge* I left my reflecting face
I got news from Erina
The roads I went through became her sorrow
For it not to be killed in confusion
In Siverek*, the love
I go fast
Brand new asphalt to Urhai* (original name of Urfa, meaning city of beautiful rivers in Syriach).
3/ 9 / 2006 Amed 4 / 9 / 2006 Urfa
Dicle: Tigris
Fiskaya Bridge: A rocky area around Diyarbakir.
Siverek: A district of Sanliurfa
Urhai: Original name of Urfa, which means " the city of beautiful rivers" in Syriach
Love Would Make One Say
We pass through the capillaries of the night
And make love under the rain
I place stars on the curves of your hair.
However further I go
At some places my stops remain
Faceless neighborhoods
A sign-less trip of eyes
Contrary to the moon
Passes the climate
Of saturated clouds
Nausea
Carrying joys without an address
The ships are passing by the Bosporus
In which ruined harbors they left,
While returning from wrong habits, their destinies
I hear the buzzing of a bee
In the very middle of silence
While my heart becomes a river not flowing anywhere
However rascal springs used to wait for me
In the guardian loves’ rapture of the deep
Dizziness nausea
I am pregnant probably to a new love
Glass And Transparent
Fragile your sorrowful face on the silvery mirrors
In a no return Africa trip now
From how many cliffs from how many canyons this heart passed through
It was my mother giving blood through the belly button for me to live
Since I kissed her lips my lover assumes to be pregnant with a poem
Now I cry you where is my hell
I stood in the night, got cold
With a bullet loaded into the nagant
I stab the jackknife into my skin, scratching
My wounded love glass and transparent
Does not leave, to strangle in its own climate
Its voice sensual novice
Tenth Month
Getting into my dreams only
Was it the grief of ecstatic lovings
In a time with no reason and no after
Returning back from suicide attempts
Was it the dreams left behind from Byzantine
Pushing constantly my being
Your pseudonym is getting stuck then
In a time whose name is left behind
From the presence of witnesses and devils
Even the swallows are migrating
Remaining desolate and in ruins I
Fracture my pomegranate flowers
In the lovings of August nights
Our crazing bodies
Call it geranium or cricket
Roaming under our skin
Or is it an old time pendulum
In the oak barren and also around the acacia
I used to wait for your hands, never arrive
It was July I was cold
My Heart In The Waters
I am the agent of all the pains
I do not give back whatever is left over
I do not give back
Until Dicle* reunites with Firat*
Ey folk songs whose bosom I was fed on
Komurhan* is also miffed
Not looking at Harput*
Ey Ahmed! City of ramparts. Of lonelinesses…
Are your narrow streets squeezed into tight times
Don’t you know Firat
Flows over my head my eyes
From which season falls off the breaking ups
Which rapture of the deep my solitude is in
And why my voice is returning back from the mirrors
In Bingol’s a thousand dividedness
I know who steals my words
I know
In the rebellion where my patience is tried
Dead end streets do not end their own dead-ends
What to do
The moon left its light to Firat
I to Hazal*, my heart
*Dicle: Tigris
*Firat: Euprates
*Komurhan: A bridge on Euprates around Malatya
*Harput: Kharput, A district of Elazig
*Amed: Diyarbakir
*Hazal: Upland around below Yama Mountain in Sivas
I Do Not Remember
It is not crane covey in my eyes
It is a warm night’s breeze
Where did I run into you first
Was it in a morning’s late hour?
All the trains of my life were stopped
Were not whistling, by flattering their wings the seagulls
Children were running around in the streets, helpless
The violinist was playing his violin on the sidewalk
Fisherman boats were passing over Halic
Like a rabid dog’s mouth
Drooling foam the waves
I do not remember the color of my dreams
Where, where did I run into you first?
Was it at a night’s eternity?
Where, where did I run into you first?
Your rose tasting mouth’s quivering, internally
In the womb of the earth
Where you a seed, a sprout, a sapling?
I don’t remember where
Where did I run into you first?
1988
Dubbing Voice
A man with a dubbing voice
Stole my dreams
He was tall, like long rivers
He used to like Nazim, did not like Necip
Used to hide his hands in the Uskudar ferry
As if a shame
While I was looking for Neruda in between the lines
He was in Sariyer already
Ah! How many delusions I raised
While life was an illusion
Now how many joy was postponed
Returned from how many solitudes
I could not count the knocks on the door
While my ear was at the phone
His was an insolent solitude
A little bit of a big jabberer
While obstructing the telephone wires
Could not know that northwester may backfire
However now
He is a lifeboat turned upside down in open seas
My Father
-To the memory of my father-
Whenever he smiled, my country’s geography was appearing on his face
Because it was history under his tongue
And in a storm silence death was
In an afternoon it came and settled on his wing
Your Eyelashes Got Cloudy
My soul, my black-eyed beggar
I have a pain in my heart, I am very tired
When I released kites to the sky
That, childhood I never was at
I returned to for a moment
In that moment, I released my bird which was in a cage
Got ecstatic, I let myself to the narrow streets
The tiredness of the sky imprisoned my eyes
My heart is beating with a new love
To your spring scented eyes
It is because of this, my soul
I play around with the pebble stones
Knots they become in my throat, the seaweeds
I am yelling, I am sobbing
You do not hear, the stars hear my voice
However I knew the night as my enemy
Look, how it became my friend, all of a sudden
Where are the marks of my captivity
I push away time in a trice
My being is a borderless love
My soul, my black-eyed beggar
Look, your eyelashes again got cloudy
Unless the gods proliferate
Kisses remain agonizing and barren
Touch my hands how warm your hands are
1988
Equations
How many goings I experience
How many your absence
I loved only Istanbul like this
And also the Tower of Leander
I could not love Galata Tower
In a wrong time
In a wrong place it stands, maybe that is why
Maybe it is its love for the Tower of Leander
That makes me anxious like this
And when I found myself
I could not find the one I thought I found in the narrow streets
And it was you the “equals to” of all the equations
And also your daring comings to me
Ah
Don’t you know the swallows
El Fatiha
Preface:
I am
the madman
Who goes to fishing during a storm
To my share of loneliness
I.
Each street I stop by becomes a sea somewhat
Full of sank ships
I should have found my old friends however
Always defective loves fall to my share somehow
Many cities I passed through
Leaving thousands of bird corpses without a shroud behind me
Each flower I touched wilted at once
My body cannot carry my gazes anymore
Tractor noise my sorrow is
While I am bloody thirsty
I reached at the fountains with blind piety
Equally ready for hell
Explosion at a protocol night
Birth: 1968 Death: who knows what
El Fatiha* to his soul
*A sura from Koran (Al-Fatehah) which is often recited after the dead.
Gazelleme
If a voice disturbs your solitude at midnight
If your eyelashes get cold
While not even the dead of winter
If your heart gets strained internally
It means I am absent
In my incomplete tomorrows
Geisha
Shoot me from my navy blue blood
So I can kiss you in the abyss of the night
Your breath is thunder on my skin
Let me kiss your sweat burble cool
A gauzy loneliness mine is
Pure and saffron unadulterated pain
Acute angle
Poisonous feminine
Wrap me
Dilemma
Sun is hiding its faded identity
From god and purple love colored cities
I am going away from the lovings of my voice I committed suicide
Towards the orgasm of shadows
Plain-table
Longings are cancelled
A blue avenue too
Houses too
Flighty blue with exfoliated plaster
(Save our folk songs Ruhi Su)
Then maybe I can return from Babylon
Beyond trains, planes and busses
With distant travels
Istanbul to your strait
My corpse is hanged to your laws
Autonomous- defenseless
In the name of unadulterated cities
You are not known.
Where
I am mindless, thus it can’t get set on you
May my sorrow set aside
An Istanbul boat that is screaming
Seagulls that are already in grief
Ah now I wish I was Uskudar
What to do with my absence
My loneliness that is on account
Hallucination
Ah, ah Katie
I am Ikarus, I know which fire I burn in
Do you know?
With the alter you gave me
I feed my poem
The capital of civilizations
In Mesopotamia
18/8/2006 G. Antep
It Is Reproach
In the entrance of each city
First the graveyards welcome me
And in a vicious circle circles the ferris wheel
My lover that stays in my heart like being far from homeland
The mistake is not hers
The mistake is fire’s
The fire that
Does not know how it burns
In an exiled time
While the history closes up
Then
I am taking hostage of all the rivers
From rains it is a Sehremini* time
Floors are covered with grief
Lime of the ceiling fell off
I thought of myrrh
The rising Nile in the mood of Babylon
Then I thought of you
In my pink fishes’
Small aquarium
While welcoming the dead of winter
1988
*Sehremini means “mayor” in Ottoman Empire. It is also the name of a neighborhood in Fatih district in Istanbul.
Poet
The man holding his bottle tight
While walking towards Kuzguncuk*
As if he was not in his coat
It was warm
While it was snowing in Kuzguncuk
There was an Ankara sorrow in his whistle
When his life stumbled
And hitting his foot on the stone
Stumbled on the floor facing down
His name was Mustafa Suphi
He was a little bit of a poet
He gathered himself
And oh my God he said, shrieking
I am all wet
Hope this is blood he prayed to god
However
The thing that broke was
The raki bottle
He bought with the rest of his money
*Kuzguncuk: A street in Ankara
TEBEGE
For my son I sacrificed
And for Mother Marry to give birth again in Urfa
And also for overcoming my fears
With its kepez, cigil and papik
I bought a pair of Angut*
I wish you see it, such a pure copper
*Angut: Rudy Sheldrake. There is a common belief that this bird brings luck to women who has no children, or who wants to get married in Urfa. In Turkish slang "angut" is also used, to indicate that someone is foolish and careless, because this bird lands when the wind is blowing from behind, thus usually stumbles.
*Kepez: Tiny piece of hairy feather on top of Angut's head.
*Cigil: Feather on the back of Angut's neck, often shaped as half moon.
*Papik: Hairy feather on Angut's feet.
Meaning and Welcoming
I would like to dedicate this poem to Mine Ozdemirtas who has a very important place in my life and surely to my valuable poet brother Alparslan Colakoglu who caused my path cross with Her.
The melody’s got lost
I took my share from the earth
Farewell, the word, is incapable
Hellos are already unmerciful
A herd of bandits, order
I took my share from the current
The voices’ve got lost in the flow of water
I woke up to the day, to the earth’s invitation
I understood
My name is my original and my duplicate
Glad I understood.
January 2009 New York
You Could Not Name It
From my women I learned writing poems
And Jesus at the old love paradoxes
At the lavatories, dropped his dentures
While rhyming the rectified love
I picked poppies from the Bingol mountains
I saw, lustful roes were going down to the water
Why this many pigeon images?
I am a poet, as white as the hands of pigeons.
During pungent lovings I frayed your red hair
The birds were not yet awake
While listening to your pulse at your tremors
I understood that I did not forget making love
Then the birds would wake up
The trains would take off
Kiss and repair
Uncalibred Lovings
Each love has a slain my lover
A madman each neighborhood has
If each time we make love our whys grow a little more, bleeding
If our juniper scented mornings are equations with multiple unknowns
What of it if the flowers are crushed on the other side of the mountains?
Each love has a slain my lover
A madman each neighborhood has
Radiance and spirit they were, lost in the light’s perfidious beam at option A
At the cradle of the ignored tragedy.
I was a madman maybe in the rotten protocol mold
Too tight for all the streets
Each love has a slain my lover
A madman each neighborhood has
My own ways are at the consistency of some smuggled tea
Getting out of Alexandria Quartet with the accompaniment of huseyni* songs
A peer of Uskudar is on the boat to Besiktas
Each love has a slain my lover
A madman each neighborhood has
Your skin was the scent of judas tree forgotten in Bakirkoy
Missed at eleven forty five, in the boat rush I was imagining
Walking to Pera
*Huseyni is one of the melody types (Makam) in Turkish classical music, which is commonly used in Anatolian folk songs.
Collapsed Grief
Twenty four carat loneliness mine is
From the Harran Plains all the way to Elbistan
And the one I met at the foot of the Diyarbekir ramparts
With ruins behind and before
Remained with the broken down
You
In which loneliness you left
Your most secluded side
And which grief is forcing its dreams upon you
At the foot of broken down ramparts
Illusions
A life tested with what to do’s
Of which I was the cavalry at Amed*
You were resentful to me
When you said not possible man
But how so many illusions I have raised
From desolate waters to Viransehir*
Harran Plain is my peer, knows me
Watches over
Although not as much as Elbistan does
I am Firat’s* son, in love with Dicle*
Dicle always remains distant
Watches over herself resentful
She supposes I will scatter cranberries in her sanctuary
Yet I am coming from how many procreations
How many breaking downs
Me the rebellious son of Mesopotamia
Zeus is my witness Erina is my guarantor
I love you
18/8/2006
*Amed (Diyarbakir)
*Viransehir (Desolate-city)
*Firat (Euphrates)
*Dicle (Tigris)
Lifeboat’s Address
For Aydin Yesilyurt
At the coast of a rental life
I stood like a hired killer
My eyes, revolt of a punished child
I am on the run from the bosom of wild horse like lovings
That is why my phone numbers
Change often
In the phone books
No avail, don’t look for
Don’t look for me
In a stormy sea
I am an helpless lifeboat now
The Ones I Look For
When the night comes birds
Take shelter at some parts of my voice
The reluctant raindrops
Fall down, down on the glass shards
While my eyes roam around at Sehremini
My eyelashes are in Ankara on these cold nights
I look for a familiar face, silent and ready to cry
Covetously I thumb through my phone books
My fingers hit the keys by themselves
No one gives out a sound
Or wrong number it is each time
I go mad
In the middle of loneliness
Sitting at the foot of a wall
I don’t cover my face with my hands
I cry, I cry for the first time without feeling embarrassed.
Petition
I don’t raise Love Phrases
Like Cemal Sureya* in love cemeteries
I am my own man by myself on the roads
While waiting for Tomris, Turgut Uyar*
Under the Big Clock
Edip* was coming from looking at the frogs with Yakup*
Metin Eloglu* before Uskudar’ingdown
Was keeping company with the tramps
While Atilla Ilhan’s* Samarkand returns
From the expedition for Bela Flower
Ercument Ucari* said I skewered a giddy red balloon
Got on the wind with the speed of a cab
Went to Beykoz to get some Raki
Ah, now I
Sitting with Pegasus on the sky
Thinking of these
All of you migrated, went away to the other side
Open room at least for one sitting so that
Near you I shall also come
*Cemal Sureya, Turgut Uyar, Edip Cansever, Metin Eloglu, Atilla Ilhan, Ercument Ucari are important poets of the post-1940 Turkish poetry.
Forgive
How so many doors
How - so much loneliness I came back from
The jasmines became my grief
That is the reason I hold onto wild flowers
Which clans I came from
Which deaths I raised
In the love sanctuaries
I come to you with my patience
Returning from an italic love
With Sisyphus’ lament
I am on the cliffs
At the wrong time pendulums
I will come early one morning
For you to pain me
Pain is my alter
Empty Village Tragedy
O Urfa, O the city of prophets
In your adobe faced gray streets
Children are running
I am in the mystery of my grief with my tight heart
I am drinking Raki so that my dreams will not be bastardized
In you, to which I came with wooden trains
I raise rag dolls
So that Unina shall bless me
Paper boats I sail
And I see the appearance
Of your Hashmili eyes in the fish pond
While you are late to me
With your pee-wee chastity
BRING ME A SEA
Come on bring me a sea
Let's also say a wind that comes with the desolate rain
Who were we Naciye
Which wound is bleeding, bleeds in our memories.
Haven’t you said, many trains came to this town Naciye
Returning and returning from the addictive loneliness
Were we Naciye
Which equations we lost our selves in
Ah Naciye did you tie your eyes with your hair
I returned from my mistakes, here
Hold the hands of my questions
Hold, so that an ocean may rise within me
May a leaf grow slowly quietly at night
With drunken curses I roam around town in the mornings
Moldy nicotine in my mouth lots of garlic
Roaming around in circles within my loneliness
I leave my crumbs to the pigeons
Now whoever I greet
A contrary full moon dies on the tip of my whistle
Can a tree sleep under its own shadow Naciye
In faceless neighborhoods
I have novice smiles Naciye that cannot fit into anywhere
That is the reason for my anger towards May, September has no guilt; believ none
What about our indecencies, our indecencies I say
The world is too tight for our indecencies
Whose guest is this silence Naciye
I cannot live in this town anymore
I am leaving, here Naciye
Just so you would not make me bleed through my wounds
Wasting Away
I wore out many lonelinesses
And I consented to keep my solitude
Crowded with myself
Before the shriek of a train
I could not put the fire I stole in a lantern
And I ate the forbidden fruit of Eve’s
While you keep away from me
In the middle of the night after three
It Is A Farewell
It was an exile experienced when a history was ending
That is why, it is not necessary to expect inspiration from mythologies
To see the gods' lovings
Because god of love Eros ordered thus
And whore angels were selling themselves in the flea market
I am on the cliffs my beloved
Who knows in which season were the screams and break ups...
However now a wounded heart love is...
Sorrow was a peer of the time that flew
And drop-by-drop the rain was falling to the earth's
Womb
Why was not Zeus the god of skies not sending with all his might
The rain
Why did I think like this and why cannot I reach my reaches
Yet again I was able to leave everything
Delusions
1-
Your breasts smelled like basil
In the afternoon lovings
There was no witness to our vanished dreams
However they were delusions the doors opening one by one
But now we are looking for our tombs in vanished cities
2-
You left, making the pains bleed one by one
You left, dew was yet to drop to the green grasses
The children were sleeping, the night was keeping quiet
You left
Into which time my grief is in a journey
You left
Long-term suicide attempts remained behind
3-
The spiders used to die one by one also when you leave
Sorrows used to be left for me
In vanished time frames
In the city of barbarians while hurling here and there
And while I could not find my self somehow
In the narrow streets where I lost
And it was raining nonstop in this city
My hands would got cold somehow
In which city stayed the photographs of sorrowful children
Always going to the wrong addresses
The registered unregistered certified letters were
What does the curtains of slums hide I do not know
I do not know anything any longer
To get used to and to reach were grief
And fire loaded grudge
It was grudge
The dead poets' city.
Absent
Suicides I raise within me
To shoot myself in my most unloved part
A Poem
I am mindless, thus it can’t get set on you
May my sorrow set aside
An Istanbul boat that is screaming
Seagulls that are already in grief
Ah now I wish I was Uskudar
What to do with my absence
My loneliness that is on account
Did you bring rain
I brought my heart
My dreams
My dreams to be lived
My dreams are fading away in my tired nights
In a sweaty Istanbul geography
Where is the place that my heart's voice falls upon
Which climate which geography
I leave this time by itself by myself
My heart is the reflection of another city on the water now
I cannot fit into myself quarter to my suicide
Does sorrow suit me
While bangos were settling on a branch
Its answer is hidden in the question
To a tyro love I was compensated
With my unresisting child side
I grew up and forgot already
An old September my sorrow is
This loneliness is also written in my account
However I would have loved to experience what could be experienced
All women bring death behind them
A Letter Not Dropped
What can I say? How so many things I wanted to say on the phone four minutes ago, however...
Why do you prefer keeping quiet and making me talk, I also don't know; all I know is, in this not rainy maybe but shiny winter night, that mystic, that exotic air of Istanbul wraps my thoughts and my body, move me even closer to myself, why?
Why am I looking for sorrowful songs in the radio stations? Why am I or are we looking for sorrow in the black and white photos? is that what lay its shadow on my life? what is it that makes us, us? that moves us away from us? now smell of spices and also the gypsy women selling ruscus at Beyoglu; but I like gypsy women... maybe it is because they are more natural...
We, how much do we know of us? Is not our life a censorship ball of yarn? Relationships that are artificial, made into a bowtie, wrapped up into a box... we consume everything: relationships, friendships, love, sharings, morals... in short us, we consume us...
The nightstand does not have any meaning or the fragrance standing on the dressing table. it does not have a value; because with that fragrance we have lost the one who offered us that fragrance... the owner of that fragrance... there is only heaving a sigh, whining that is left. There is no force in these lamentations. We, are not us anymore; because we remember the past with our remembrances. even if you say "vah!" no use, the values that add us to us, the objects flew away. Not quietly of course, while looking at us in the eye they went away. Because we cannot stomach to say "stop, don't go! I would get hurt without you!" they went away. she would put secretly to a corner her sweater she owns, but the one that she knows you like a lot, as if she has forgotten, leaves it behind and goes away. And this pain would be enough for you...
In time you got used to the pains, loneliness you chose. in a novels' empty page or in an incomplete poems ' lines we look for ourselves. it is too late at that. we have lost ourselves in the streets we can never find; narrow, damp and dark. Useless... Helplessly we return back, to become us again (how so many things we would give up to gain the ones we lost?) helplessly we roam around in the room. and sometimes we drop on the coach all in just like that... our eyes look unwillingly, with a running glance, like the moments we are afraid to face, secretly and sinister to the phone that we expect to ring any time . does not come... The call that we wait for does not come; it was a wrong number that was dialed: "I am sorry, sir" it is said and hung up. you, with the breakdown that disappointment causes, again wait for that phone call to arrive, that call never arrives.
this, goes on like this, until you again find someone new that you can lose... and this takes tooooooo long...
Translated by Fulya Peker
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