TUĞRUL TANYOL
(1953)
BASRA The dead calm gulf's waters drew back. The crazed stallion of desire got mad. Autumn rushed into the gully of a shivering summer like a snake rearing away from its black shadow.
Ah, the leaf that curls with pain and trembling happiness. Is this a crumb of thought that brings life to a feeling in an enigma? The total absence shattering the sacred dust in the vast emptiness - pe'haps a moonstone perhaps that Satrap of darkness cloaked in green from distant Kerbela, on the haj to Mecca, in pillaged and looted Basra city.
Medieval, with a white beard and black tuIban he seeps into the dead calm gulf's waters. Die, kill and be blessed on the field where the crescent is split in two.
My God, where is the promised key to paradise. The dark waters of the gulf bear away the ownerless shadows of the purple corpses. Translated by Richard McKane CEM (The plight of the poet in Turkey is compared to Prince Cem's misfortunes.) To Mehmet Mufit The day faded, red drops gleaming in its skirts. I wandered night's eroded garden In a yellow rain, enclosed by endless rocks, Memories shaking my heart, the copper smell of flight, My childhood a throne room, my sultanate lost in Bursa. All the gates closed, every gate a wall. I turned, I saw that great mirror reflecting The migrant rain where being and nothingness merge. The day faded, red drops gleaming in its skirts. There were no gates at my coming. Sunset, the quay The sunken hulls off Rhodes. Through my galley's swollen beams I heard the wind's whisper etched Across the vast waters of my face. High hills there, here steep and bitter ways, A horse's neigh, dark scent of rose, Secret passages under temple ruins And the chorus of petrified dead in musty cellars. Who goes there? unwary traveller in this spring dawn And virgins walking in white winding-sheets. Suddenly lightning! gates appeared and vanished Defeat and pain, flight and exile. With the copper smell Of loneliness rising in time's lost mirror, This curse forged on my brow, this unknown journey, I felt a thousand redhot irons sear my flesh My body hanging from dark crenels --- Myself a spring dawn's sacrificial victim. Suddenly rain! one half of my face washed away. Lead seals me eyeless! These are my bridal gifts A bass wind moans in the desolate hollows The desolate caves of my eyes --- whose turn now? All my mates hanged from the drowned rigging of my sunken ship Oh my Celal! dear Sinan! Where does this sea flow? We alone are left Rain blots out all the gates. I, Cem, till yesterday ruled half an empire. My image faded on the coins I minted I died a thousand deaths, I watched my own corpse Striking the shore. I walked with greasy ropes about my neck (sunset, the quay, The sunken hulls off Rhodes) and now The world has no more place for me No house or palace, neither throne nor rank. Give me your hand, elder brother, let me near, Take me in, have me strangled if you need, Part of me totally dark, part suddenly rain! Days were buried in a forest's soundless scream, In the bottomless wells of its heart. Courage: The darkness behind my eyes is a haunted land --- I'll never reach. The day faded, red drops gleaming in its skirts, A horse's neigh, dark scent of rose And no gates at my coming. The gates erased, I, stranded in lost time, was left outside. In this cold, this darkness of desolation, I am alone, my hands my only light. FATHERS FAR OFF Some nights there's a child who quietly shifts in his bed. Loneliness like daylight spreading in secret caverns multiplies his desolation. Some nights there are stars as distant and many as themselves. The child shivers silently in search of the warmth spun in the hours when dust settles. Some nights we travel far. We look, a door opens in darkness, dust flies up. There a man moves quietly apart from a woman; there a child curls up in himself. Some nights fathers grow old and distant. There's the muffled silence of a stone cast in water, moonlight, shadows - a paper boat. Some nights far off, behind a hill the plain: the image of a scream in the cup of my hands. FRIENDSHIP DAYS ARE OVER My gipsy soul, curb your horse, there is nowhere to go from here. Evening, a wind-winged bird, settles heavy: now is the moment when travellers fail. Bend down, look in my face at the old maps traced in my eyes, at those old roads sprinkled with stars, no more long slow trails of caravans camped by the rivers, no hot summer nights of nomadic drinking-bouts. Here is the night's roof, the beauty of creation opening out, we have come to the end of the days of free proud friendship, when we slept beneath a thousand skies, made love and multiplied. What is this longing, it consumed us in half-open rooms where candles melted away? Where are we, what time is it? Whose work this dark street, this snowwhite shroud, this lost time that suddenly died? If I shoot an arrow and bring down night luminous days will kneel at my feet, my heart will open with the newly-washed wounds in your naked breasts, with the roar in the topmost branch of the tree. My gipsy soul, curb your horse, we've come to the end of the road. FIRST GLIMPSE You look from the window one morning, the greening courtyard Whispering secret hints of a forest in your ear Is suddenly from end to end stripped bare. It's Time's white mare, wayward and passionate, Raising her head from the meadow of days, who looks at you. You race to her hotfoot And wild from the rough sea foam You enter a templed forest and suddenly vanish. The wind wipes your name from the blackboard of days. The childhood games and love's enchanted voice, Offered by all the serpents of the Tree, That first glimpse, from your window, to the open fields. THE MAGIC HAS GONE the magic has gone,the boat that stirred the water shrank to a frail shell, the stone stopped falling, fruit wilted on the tree, before she could be a woman our dear one grew old the magic has gone, look! the sea, the moon only half in a race like a sleepless man on a cloudless night this shivering star, the tree's reflection, like something falling into your heart, perhaps as though over and finished it's gone, the sleeper awoke and saw the unseen become visible, the voice feared its echo, the shadow belonged to no one, the eagle found his prey where the fox-cubs hid before they could flee the magic has gone, the old man turned to the voice that called him he died there again in the hope of becoming young a thousand times the light broke into all its colours, a thousand times the cave overflowed with our shouts and cries it closed and became a mountain, with the coffee-grounds' reading that never worked out hope waned and fled closed ways suddenly opened but no one came back, no silent ship the magic has gone, the snake turned on itself bitten by the fangs of its huddling young the scorpion returned to night, there was a halo of flame, a saint appeared, a poet, the prophet took off his turban, he shed his jacket, on his road to Hira the sacred mountain shoots in the desert found water again the magic has gone, it's you I found, Lord, the unseen became visible, the voice feared its echo, in the midst of the people and the city the mirage became real, what was was not the magic has gone, you did not see it was just a deep dream that came down and will come again WHERE MOTHERS STAY YOUNG To write a poem all weeping must stop. The poem begins where feelings rest, Writing, where childhood ends and love feels chilled, Where mothers stay always young. The frozen heat of these piles of snow That has never for centuries abated At the threshold of our old home With its faded windows, Moves quietly into my heart. Look mother, I'm that child up there My skinny body trembling at your song. On the crystal window thoughts appear and vanish Struggling with huge snow-images outside. I watched you from every corner of the room A picture imprinted on my eyes, perhaps it was you Who sketched my happiest moments, silence Trembling on your lips from those worn tiles. Now I rub the invisible windows of dusty memories I'm outside, mother, it's snowing and I'm cold. Take me in, hug me, warm my body I'm falling, falling from high in that old room. To write a poem all weeping must stop. The poem begins where feelings rest, Writing, where childhood ends and love feels chilled, Where mothers stay always young. THE COLD PALACE OF THE FAITHLESS NYMPH She dabbles her feet in the chill water loving her water-image that looks at herself, a seagull flies from the rocks where she runs, a rider suddenly is on her, she feels the horse's breath on her cheeks and in one bead of sweat that falls from its cheeks to her nipples she traces its footprints through all the continents it crossed. In the taut skin of its belly she hears the boom and throb of never-ending drums. From the chill waters where her feet are dipped she creates a love-ring and casts it wide; from the light that blinds men's eyes who are caught in those rings a dragon takes shape and waits for those captive souls. In that forest of captive souls how many trees could escape? Hearts hang in the sun to dry on the sharp-pointed branches, many a sightless man looking at the past through hollows gouged by sharp-beaked sparrows, now waits for the cold palace of the faithless nymph. Playfully dabbling her feet in the water she looks at its scatter of limpid laughter, she builds palaces of ice over winter's wounds, under the ice the wound bleeds endlessly. In the cold palace of the faithless nymph woman finds herself and man is turned to stone. WINTER TALE This winter we'll open new dream-tunnels in loneliness and bury our faces a little deeper. An old treasure-hunter will set sail for new islands; the rivers again will be armed with pirate-ships. Winter sleep, the long and tedious nights, sometimes snow falls, sometimes from a book, a child's left open, there steals a tale of sultans, or three oranges or a riddle. Winter obsessions, reality and dream, who is the Sultan, who the child or pirate? This winter we'll open up new tunnels and be buried in blankets of snow. What bark is this whose timbers inspire fear in an old treasure-hunter? . . . a pirate-ship, for sure. THE MELANCHOLY CAFE Two empty lines, a melancholy cafe, autumn, out-of-work fishermen swing on old chairs; wind grabs my head and flings it to far-off days, the stream's sediment settles, minutes settle. Fading cat-evening, the blindness hour, autumn, inside Time's swift flow the moments slow, dark Arab horses racing in distant meadows and sudden opening between the leaves, the graveyard. Someone out there keeps count of bygone days. Two empty lines, a melancholy caf?, autumn, a wind herds children towards the days to come. There for us is only separation, death. Stream-magic: do the waters that sever the broken bridge always flow back to the past, to the past? by Ruth Christie THE STRIPPED AGE scooped-out regions of the sea, wind's tranquil childhood some spectral people now scattered along the ways the plant eating the corpse, the green of water-country the river uniting us on the other bank in fields of happiness ah! the place I've reached since my mother's desolate words is a palace of loneliness, where caravans pass without touching where are howling dogs and a road under the chilly moon goes no one knows where where love is divided out in portons to be shared what's left for me? I'm forty-three the stripped age storm clouds swelling the palms of the sea I trailed after them to these hill-tops agonized eagle screams inside the abyss was a stripped bone, there a spectral man bleeding from deep wounds looked at me it was a life bedecked with tinsel and tatt it passed a mother's touch remained, on my cheek a pale tremor Translated by Ruth Christie
"Ships Carrying Dead Doves"
"Cherry Time"
"I heard the Merry-Go-Round"