05/06/2011

My heart feels like a stone
Made up of some heavy metal
Sitting there enlarging
Anytime you pass through
My heart feels like a burden
A stop sign
Too big to spit out
Too bitter to swallow
My heart feels like a stone
Stepping, pounding, pressing on
Not moving,
Not yielding,
Not accepting
What’s going on

05/19/2011

You walk in the mud
Holding on to clouds
Feet dirty
Sticking on the ground
You can pull yourself up
Wash off and go on
Smell will leave with enough soap
But the memories
Of dirt
Of darkness
Will not leave you
So you need to clean
Clean the mud
Not the feet

04/29/2011

Where the roads cross
You hand over your heart to me
Like a precious stone.
Heaviness of the burden
Of the fragile beats-------
I can’t exchange it
With the bitter taste
Of the knife

GOODBYE

I have decided once in for all
Not to be your shadow anymore
On your almond tree…
Because the sun you love
Is killing me gently
I will not follow you in secret
Cool you down with my darkness
I will not tremble and move
Anytime you smile
I will stay in this corner
Stay collected
Stay still
Stay wondered

It's This Way

I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees--
they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can't smell the medicines--
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender.

~by Nazim Hikmet

Ich will mit ihm gehen, den ich liebe

Ich will mit dem gehen, den ich liebe.
Ich will nicht ausrechnen, was es kostet.
Ich will nicht nachdenken, ob es gut ist.
Ich will nicht wissen, ob er mich liebt.
Ich will mit ihm gehen, den ich liebe.

by Bertolt Brecht

DESPITE

I loved you like the mountains love the sky
As in the happiness where wounds heal
As in the embrace of the mother of a found child after long missing…
I loved you like the warm bread and tea
Not because you were somebody else in my imagination,
But because you were all there was.
I loved you like no one on this earth should be loved,
Too soon,
Too much,
Too carelessly.
As you were a part of me like my eyes
I loved you with all my might, blood, veins and creases
And this wild missing, this farness unfillable…
I loved you knowing there was no loving back…

SILENCE

How distant the sun looks
Sinking with age over mountains
of September.

How late the fire-flies are
With summer's colloquy:

We remain silent beyond the shore
of wrecked knowledge.


~Cuneyt Ayral (from the book Siir Mezarliklari Gibi)
Translated by Feyyaz Kayacan (Fergar) 1979/London

NO SOLUTION

Wherever rain falls on the desert
My hair gets drenched all alone
Like those nights of utter quiet
Modern vehicles halt
And the tumult ends
Foreign violets bloom there
Water.

Mutable
In its monotony
Constant down the ages
Night transforms itself into morning
And beyond
Takes on a season's pectrum.

It perpetuates its secret with such ease
From chaos to eternity
Evolving-that is to say,
well-it's a bit obscure:
What sage could solve it for certain?

Yes which sage can solve it with precision
Sometimes a polyphonic melody
Sometimes a dot or a dash
"To be or not to be..."


~ Turkan Ildeniz ~

Translated by Talat Sait Halman (1982)

I BECAME A TREE

I was going under a tree
It happened in a flash
I fell apart from myself
And became a poppy flower
Bending in the sun,
Tortoise shell, house of wedding
Delirious talk, bevy of names.
I turned into the petal that drags
The wind like a blind God,
I became the century.
A tiny moment like a bug.
I was going under a tree
I became a tree
That propels itself
And saw someone stuck in the ground.

~Melih Cevdet Anday
Translated by Talat Sait Halman (Talisman, 1991(Spring 6))

LOVE AND A COMET

all the doctors I consulted
said the same thing
- as if they'd planned it:
"you've caught love, a disease
which isn't easy to bear at your age"

whereas I had thought
that I'd simply crashed
into a comet
when my heart brightened up
with a flash
in a blind-alley of life

(Translated by Tarık Günersel)

I Want To Go With The One I Love

I want to go with the one I love.
I do not want to calculate the cost.
I do not want to think about whether it's good.
I do not want to know whether he loves me.
I want to go with whom I love.

Bertolt Brecht

If You Forget Me (Pablo Neruda read by Madonna)