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