EYES

It seems nothing can provoke
Our inner silence
No sound, no word, nothing
The eyes!
Bring out the eyes!

Nothing else but this unites us
A leaf touching another leaf
So close, so docile
The hands I said!
Bring out the hands!

In our age, love is an opposition
Let us unite to cast two single shadows...

Edip Cansever
Translated by Talat Sait Halman

I WAS THE ONLY ONE (Translated from Turkish)

Nobody really loved you actually,
I was the only one,
Not like as it were…
I loved you as quenching my thirst
As satisfying my hunger
As fully
Nobody really loved you actually
Hesitated to love you
But I loved you, as burning
Knowingly
Like I have lost my mind
Like someone put a pistol on my forehead
Like I had to
Like I did not have any other choice
I was the only one loved you,
And you never loved me actually
Like you loved anyone else…

Can Yücel

A BAD CONSCIENCE

the truth is
first I saw the colour yellow, then
all the rest
it was an infant lost in thought with her toy
in the sky


the man and the child
were both walking ahead and watching
with half closed eyes
not having the slighest interest
in the rainbow above


I swear
I have a bad conscience since that very day
for not having pointed to the child
the seven colours all at once

(Translated by Cevat Çapan)

ALEA IACTA EST

Attila crossed the Danube
Hannibal crossed the Alps
Caesar crossed the Rubicon

And I crossed
My self
Burning all the flowers behind me

Can Yucel (1926-)
Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat

Thirty-Three Bullets

I.

This is the Mengene mountain
When dawn creeps up at the lake Van
This is the child of Nimrod
When dawn creeps up against the Nimrod
One side of you is avalanches, the Caucasian sky
The other side a rug, Persia
At mountain tops glaciers, in bunches
Fugitive pigeons at water-pools
And herds of deer
And partridge flocks...

Their courage cannot be denied
In one-to-one fights they are unbeaten
These thousand years, the servants of this area
Come, how shall we give the news?
This is not a flock of cranes
Nor a constellation in the sky
But a heart with thirty-three bullets
Thirty-three rivers of blood
Not flowing
All calmed to a lake on this mountain



II.

A rabbit came up from the foot of the hill
Its back is motley
Its belly milk-white
A mountain rabbit, pregnant, lost up here
Its heart heaved to its mouth, poor thing
It can draw repentance from man.
The hour was solitary, a solitary time
It was faultless, naked dawn

One of the thirty-three looked
In his body the heavy void of hunger
Hair and beard all tangled
Lice on his collar
He looked, and his arms were wounded
This lad with hellion heart
Looked once at the rabbit
Then looked behind
His delicate carbine came to his mind
Sulking under his pillow
Then came the young mare he brought from the plain of Harran
Her mane blue-beaded
A blaze on her forehead
Three fetlocks white
Her cantering easy and generous
His chesnut mare
How they had flown in front of Hozat!

If he were not now
Helpless and tied like this
The cold barrel of a gun behind him
He could have hidden on these heights
These mountains, the friendly mountains, know your worth
Thank God, my hands will not put me to shame
These hands that can flick off with the first shot
The burning tobacco ash
Or the tongue of the viper
Sparkling in the sun
These eyes were not duped even once
By the ravines waiting for avalanches
By the soft, snowy betrayal of cliffs
These knowing eyes
No use
He was going to be shot
The order was final
Now the blind reptiles will devour his eyes
The vultures his heart.

III.

In a solitary corner of the mountains
At the hour of morning prayer
I lie
stretched
Long, bloody...

I have been shot
My dreams are darker than night
No one can find a good omen in them
My life gone before its time
I cannot put it into words
A pasha sends a codded message
And I am shot, without inquest, without judgment

Kinsman, write my story as it is
Or they might think it a fable
These are not rosy nipples
But a dumdum bullet
Shattered in my mouth...

IV.

They applied the decree of death
They stained
The half-awakened wind of dawn
And the blue mist of the Nimrod
In blood
They stacked their guns there
Searched us
Feeling our corpses
They took away
My red sash of Kermanshah weave
My prayer beads and tobacco pouch
And left
Those were all gifts to me from friends
All from the Persian lands

We are guardians, relatives, tied by blood
We exchange with families
Across the river
Our daughters, these many centuries
we are neighbours
Shoulder to shoulder
Our chickens mingle together
Not out of ignorance
But poverty
We never got used to passports

This is the guilt that kills us
We end up
Being called
Bandits
Killers
Traitors...

Kinsman, write my story as it is
Or they might think it a fable
These are not rosy nipples
But a dumdum bullet
Shattered in my mouth

V.

Shoot, bastards
Shoot me
I do not die easyly
I am live under the ashes
I have words buried in my belly
For those who understand
My father gave his eyes on the Urfa front
And gave his three brothers
Three young cypresses
Three chunks of mountain without their share of life
And when friends, guardians, kin
Met the French bullets
Out of towers, hills, minarets

My young uncle Nazif
His moustache still new
Handsome
Light
Good horseman
Shoot, brothers, he said
Shoot
This is the day of honour
And reared his horse...

Kindsman, write my story as it is
Or they might think it a fable
These are not rosy nipples
But a dumdum bullet
Shattered in my mouth...


AHMET ARIF

Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat (1982)

A SAD STATE OF FREEDOM

You waste the attention of your eyes,
the glittering labour of your hands,
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves
of which you'll taste not a morsel;
you are free to slave for others-
you are free to make the rich richer.

The moment you're born
they plant around you
mills that grind lies
lies to last you a lifetime.
You keep thinking in your great freedom
a finger on your temple
free to have a free conscience.

Your head bent as if half-cut from the nape,
your arms long, hanging,
your saunter about in your great freedom:
you're free
with the freedom of being unemployed.

You love your country
as the nearest, most precious thing to you.
But one day, for example,
they may endorse it over to America,
and you, too, with your great freedom-
you have the freedom to become an air-base.

You may proclaim that one must live
not as a tool, a number or a link
but as a human being-
then at once they handcuff your wrists.
You are free to be arrested, imprisoned
and even hanged.

There's neither an iron, wooden
nor a tulle curtain
in your life;
there's no need to choose freedom:
you are free.
But this kind of freedom
is a sad affair under the stars.

Nazim Hikmet
Translated by Taner Baybars

Poem 2 (Translated from Turkish)

What kind of farewell is this? what kind of goodbye?
Your eyes say stay, your lips say go..
Your gaze is the key, your eyes are the lock,
Your hands say open, your lips say go..

A.S.İlkan

I Loved The Possibility (Translated from Turkish)

I loved the possibility of you loving me one day,
With you at a breakfast cafe in Agri
With you at a small diner on the road
Its place known by the people
Because they had to
With you on top of a dusty mud roof of any one of the homes of DoguBeyazit
Which gazes the Mount Ararat in a consistency of a mystical dark tea
I loved the possibility of being with you
In a human hand’s sweaty geography
I loved the possibility of you loving me!

YILMAZ ERDOĞAN

Phenomenal Woman ~by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.
I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size
But when I start to tell them,
They think I'm telling lies.
I say,
It's in the reach of my arms
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

I walk into a room
Just as cool as you please,
And to a man,
The fellows stand or
Fall down on their knees.
Then they swarm around me,
A hive of honey bees.
I say,
It's the fire in my eyes,
And the flash of my teeth,
The swing in my waist,
And the joy in my feet.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Men themselves have wondered
What they see in me.
They try so much
But they can't touch
My inner mystery.
When I try to show them
They say they still can't see.
I say,
It's in the arch of my back,
The sun of my smile,
The ride of my breasts,
The grace of my style.
I'm a woman

Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Now you understand
Just why my head's not bowed.
I don't shout or jump about
Or have to talk real loud.
When you see me passing
It ought to make you proud.
I say,
It's in the click of my heels,
The bend of my hair,
the palm of my hand,
The need of my care,
'Cause I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal woman,
That's me.

Salvation

Now I know the salvation comes,
When you stop asking the questions
Your heart can't answer!

Which One...

You are loving someone else,
Someone else is loving me...
Which one of it hurts me more,
I'm still yet to see...

Carzy Moon

Crazy moon
Turning me insane.
Ten thousand lovers
I only want you.
Useless logic
Does not get me there.
Because I've learned to live
With my open wounds...