Gonca Özmen

Wound

– because love no longer speaks–
Let's go in deep....Into the well's depth...
The darkness there, silence and the fear of water
And the depths words can't reach.

As if I dripped myself on a canvas
I dissolved into that strangled symphony
Already you are an exhausted moan in my voice

– because the dream lives no more –
– Let's go away .... Away from love...
The ashes there, memory and the dregs of death
And the unkempt silence of the mountains

Know that
Each well lives in its own loneliness
Every bird
faces the dawn
with its own song.../

Translated by Ronald Tamplin and Cemal Demircioğlu, "Yara" (Kuytumda)

Wet

Night and your face has not come
The windows, tired from watching, brood

In the weaving of a spider's web
Darkness is sealed
Old houses found no sleep
Trees at times quivered to their roots
The lips of flowers are wet

Later, still later a door turned in upon itself
I saw: the flame is mist
and your voice water


We all have our own pale shade of defeat
An inner sea spoilt

(This pillage of the sky would not have happened
if we had let things grow old)

– Now a pinch of sky at the well's edge
is close to falling

Translated by Ronald Tamplin and Cemal Demircioğlu, "Islak" (Kuytumda)

Moontime

It was moontime
Night longed for its lost sleep
Took cover in a looted pain
Flesh without warning took wings and flew
And nobody noticed

(Nobody had known)
The body's fire starts without flame
Turning to ice, waiting,
uttering as sighs drops of dew
Bridges can't touch the water
Water is always naked
its wound it cannot conceal

It was the roughening of exhausted lakes
This grey town always held us back
Those loves embers in the ash
A cry escaped,
its fear swelling in its own echo,
Amplifying the sadness of lonely rooms

Your eyes were a blue mistake in spelling
Now let the waters speak of you

Translated by Ronald Tamplin and Cemal Demircioğlu,
"Ay Zamanı" (Kuytumda)

Autumn Chills

My childhood strewn with mudmade toys
Gleanings starved of water
Always etched on my face in pain the steppe
Crisis in my hands, desolation in my voice

Nobody heard the bellflower
Seed unknown to the soil's fire
The river, blazing in its red breath,
Meandered through unexclaiming lives

The curve of night ceased in a wilderness of grief

Because of this, harsh history on my white skin,
(the white skin of women, only, is remembered)
Much loneliness, few windows, because of this
Autumnal chills sheltered me, and hidden dens

Translated by Ronald Tamplin and Cemal Demircioğlu,
"Sonbahar Üşümeleri" (Kuytumda)

Love ... Flowing To Body

Words tell dreams
(You are the dream words tell)


From the earth where roses bleed
drop by drop I fall to life
I use the days trying to lay waste a grief

Night too trembles
Mysterious murmurings of desert birds
sing the morning
A child is growing with the moon's warmth
Within a woman's body flow all rivers
– Body, that bird upon the waters-

But the lake's turmoil is in its depths
The shore alone records
the salt history of the sea
.....

– Now crammed into what shell,
  Ever waiting on blood-soaked knees, is that love?

Translated by Ronald Tamplin and Cemal Demircioğlu,
"Aşk ... Bedene Sızıntı" (Kuytumda)

Stone Hallway

A little while ago
I gave coolness to the hallway

I was like the inside of a house
I was dust on a table

I was at one with this world somehow

It was autumn
I was unshaded water

Would it chill you if I opened the windows
And left the words ajar
Your sweat lingers here and there
Its stain I know remains

The tear-stains I know remain

You were a promise
You dropped from my finger

I the mark of scissors
Still on the paper

Translated by Mel Kenne and Ruth Christie, "Taşlık" (Belki Sessiz'den)

Cross-Breed

I read Dante I stripped a man white
A good child I lay down and took stock
My losses great, my gains many, my sins sweet
See how I'm reduced to bushes and brambles

I asked about birds I delved in the forest white
I stripped myself bare and headed out
How great to stop between your shoulder and evening
I looked long at distant mallows

I read Dante I kissed a soldier white
Once like a whole town asleep
I came back the echo of a stone you threw
The world sometimes, sometimes the world is one blood only

I sat then I found a mouth that would be silent
We mixed together forlorn and white
My book, my sacred text, my mixed child
I reek because of you

I read Dante I knocked down a state black

Translated by Ruth Christie and Mel Kenne, "Melez"

Handkerchief

Once I was black grapes for you
I was juicy, I had plenty of fruit

My arms couldn't encompass the world
I turned and loved my shame

While you were smoothing out the night
I was a jacket an iron never knew

I rose high, I had plenty of fruit
Finally finally I grew into your body

I once smelled of sleep for you
I was all the times you forgot
The world was a friend, one of us
You couldn't stoop to look

Time doesn't last long for anyone
You wept and were cleansed

I was left a handkerchief singed at the edge

Translated by Mel Kenne and Ruth Christie, "Mendil"

The Land Of Mulberry

Come to the land of mulberry
To the remoteness of dwellings

I'll teach you quiet
And the branches' concern


I'll kiss where you're waning
Where nature wanes

Cross the plain
Come to the land of mulberry
Into the grasses

I'll make you listen to the storm
To the scream of the storm-god

A long while later
I'll wait for you again
Beyond a stream

Cross the field
Come closer come
To the mulberry scent

I'll show you the ants

Translated by Ruth Christie, "Dutluk" (Belki Sessiz'den)

Naked

I.

– I'm the one vanishing from your words

I waited in a lost language
And went on and on about a flaw

Bit by bit, I wore away
And became compassion for every silence

Why don't you speak less crowdedly
And look rundown when finishing a line

II.

– I am the one stepping out of your fears

Let birds, too, have their say
And, in winter's distance, take shelter in my home

The wind tires from carrying longings
From breathing in a void each time it opens its mouth

Why don't you see the accusation in averted gazes
And the childlike quality of water

III.

– I am the one fleeing your joy

This revelry will break the circle at its centre
My mare nature will spur your night

I get hurt by a word with a fallen hat
By your boisterous loves and your god

Why don't you love a limping poem, its flaw
And let time pass through your body

Translated by Arzu Eker and Deniz Perin, "Çιplak" (Belki Sessiz'den)

Start Again

Save me the statue of your feet
Save me that shy flower in your pot

I, who am oppressed by the whiteness of a page
The solitude of mute houses on my face

Wherever I look, this garden's mess
If only I could pass through you
My sorrow's carriage, its limping pace

Save me the awareness
Of this wound, our mortality

I, who am the birds' migration time
The vicious snake you've been feeding

Oh, the spacious calm of unknowing

The wind brought fear
Set it between us, just like that

Break through the silent and start again

Translated by Arzu Eker and Deniz Perin, "Bana Beklet" (Belki Sessiz'den)

You

I'm not a thing like you

You spoiled my beauty so terribly
Gouging, deep, wearing me out

I if I lie down know
You if I lie down hope

An undead man
A puppet woman

Your sounds set off massive confusion
Chalk up one more to your barbarity

What do my outer garden my inner pebbles hold for you
My back's freshness what's that to you

What do my longing for cold fountains
My speech, my wellbeing, my liveliness have to do with you

Please could you just forget me a little?

Translated by Mel Kenne, "Siz," (Belki Sessiz'den)

Shadows

A person looks at a yellow patience sometimes
However human a yellow patience may be

A person sometimes goes to olive trees
Feeds the horses, touches the curtains

Sometimes, too, a language dies
Or an ant smiles

A word goes and finds another
A walnut retreats into its shell
An insect suddenly forgets its voice

The evening, secretly, in the garden
In the garden secretly
A forever grows

The world belongs not to us, but to shadows

Translated by Deniz Perin & Arzu Eker, "Gölge"

Lift The Clouds

Slowly resemble a courtyard
It's better this way

Nurture a coolness in your mouth
Study the language of windows

Comprehension's roof is leaking, look, in every house
Unravel my writing
Rearrange all the sounds

Who taught us these sounds anyway
Who drew the sky

If you go, distant cities will smear onto my face
If you speak, my silence onto water

Lift the night off you
It's better this way

Save a dream for your flesh
Dissolve into the void of words

Translated by Deniz Perin and Arzu Eker, "Bulutlarι Kaldιr" (Belki Sessiz'den)

Stain

I.

The valley opened its secret to me
I found you in an endless plain
The instant the leaf was detached, the fig silent

I had a troubled, stunted side
I put you right there

Take those beautiful waters, those beautiful smells
The far away approached
Of course a woman poured a river inside

Stay on the other end of touching
Keep embracing the absence which you think is me

The wind blowing from both of us
Is gathering leaves anyhow

The leaves blowing from both of us
Is gathering the wind

II.

With you I thought everything becomes quiet
Time tells its secrets to curtains
A trail keeps running through my body
I was those unending words
The waiting wood

I believed the sky comes down with you
A squirrel skips in your arms
And takes me to a stain
That's how I believed

You were those tireless waters
Lively sounds
And this way I always filled myself in you.

III.

You started let everything go by
The geranium blossom in me, let the sea retire

Let me also have a dream with seeds
Rivers run through me... wild figs

Because the morning has anxious lips
There are solitary places, ah! Darkness

If time'd already stopped let's also be quiet
the light coming from your eyes not know how to turn back

In words, let the angst of the body emerge
let my face in the photograph no more grow old

You started let everything go by
keep quiet said the ant let time continue

Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat and Petr Kucera, "Leke" (Belki Sessiz'den)

What Happens

I learnt compassion from water
put my hand in it, the flowing liquid
touching whomever, going wherever

Do not pick me up
I like to fall apart

Everything that happens looked at me
What happens... Well, what doesn't

Waters do not return the dead
They sleep... not in their beds

What will happen will do so
yes it will do so

I'll make peace with my own garden
with history though three arms missing

Discovery sometimes ends in defeat
I dwelt in your voice, in your still plain

And you died there
And I washed your body here

Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, "Olup Bitenler" (Belki Sessiz'den)

Crossroads

Everyone sleeps to die
a little

Every woman once sat on a lap
of tenderness

That pallor soothes the pain
Suffering is snowfall, it covers

Every road you make a turn on
crosses my face

Packing my voice the night before
I'll go again to one who is you

To one whose sleep is narrow
whose sorrow is wide

To your neck
To the crossroads of our mouths

Translated by Güneli Gün, "Dört Yol Ağzι"

On The Way

We were on our way heading for the fault
Flocks of birds, lizards, water lilies

We were on our way heading for the fault
Between us a whirlwind of anguish

To lie sleepless with the waxing moon is not for nothing
A regular life like combing our hair

There, among the olive trees
We stood, silent and spent

Ceylon garnets, bumblebees, a crooked sky
A warped plant, a river free to roam

We were heading for... the ache of time...

Translated by Ruth Christie, "Gidiyorduk" (Belki Sessiz'den)

Memet

Take these ratta-tats Memet
Take them to the ratta-tatta man

Take this me Memet
Take this me to the meadows

Do I know what to do with me?
To me, I'm always a seabattle Memet

Take this me to the birds
Drop this me to the poor suburbs

Battling's a backpack anyway Memet

Besides can a wound get old
Just keep me waiting again on a pillow-bed

Even the apple awaits its time

Just ... me in a big old urn...
Deeper even deeper Memet

Just watch what a carnival, the human race

Does the ratta-tatta man
Ever ratta-tat the ratta-tat Memet?

Best if you dump me in with the poor Memet
Take this me, throw this me off the minaret

Translated by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne

Mustafa

I peeled the orange Mustafa
I placed you at my bedside

A bed, look, no wider than a grave
Just like that deep down I'd offered myself

Thin sword, thin blood, slim death
This condemnation I invented myself

Dumma dumma dum in every man a woman

The one romping inside me had black eyes
One, Mustafa, doesn't call out my name any more

They think this one's a love poem too, so let them
Their umbrellas are large
They're not getting wet

These skies must be pulled down Mustafa, pulled down
In people deep down lies their boundlessness

Keep me cool Mustafa
Keep me cool
In being alive lies the word's being

To return, those children in far off homes

Translated by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne