Poems of Turkey
THE TRINITY OF SEA-FARING BLUES REDUCED TO ONE
A day of falsehood and fraud, a day foul and fully lived
A day eyeless earless handless footless disjointed and dumpy
All my losses and glooms massed together and all my chaos
And the adventures I lived through for so many millenia
My glooms and my...
The clock chimed like a Chinese jar.
Bending my brim hat over my misery,
Out of my white insomnia, I,
Exiled to your face,
You woman,
You were in every secret corner,
Your shadow nettled on the dark street,
A child sang
Lullabies endlessly, and a violin
Lengthened the blue smile of a young...
AT MY TOUCH IT TURNS INTO A FADED ROSE
It falls off a lot of people, heaven knows,
Yet no passerby catches sight of it,
I bend and pick it up,
At my touch it turns into a faded rose.
In one of those big cities
He wanders at this or that crowded spot
In the country at a far-off place where he is
In...
THE SOUND OF A TRAINI am a stranger;
Neither is there a beautiful woman to console me
In this town
Nor a familiar face;
Let me not hear the sound of a train,
My two eyes
Two fountains.
Orhan Veli
Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, 1989
Nazim Hikmet (RAN) (1902, Salonica - June 3, 1963, Moscow) Poet, playwright, novelist, memoirist Living is no laughing matter:you must live with great seriousnesslike a squirrel, for example-I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,I mean living must be your...