from Rüzgâr Saati (1956) [“Wind Hour”]
Translated from the Turkish by Zeynep Özer
WIND HOUR
Never mind the green the grass you
Watered then mowed from that very first light
They’ll come back fresh in three days tops
Never mind the sparrows you startled
In mid-morning – just for the hell of it –
They’ll have forgotten before sundown
My woundedness a pierced point
Dilates and grows behind my eyes
My mind is swept in whistles in ballads
The wind hours I can’t keep at home
Whether they blow or not they still travel
The wind hours I can’t keep at home
Like drifters and streets
They fill my memories
A weariness from head to toe
What is memory what holds my memories
Far away from this city from this park
Anywhere else will do
Tired meadows sparrows, I am tired
What should I do with my hands now
A blue on the roof the eaves the chimney
Wanders into sleep
Never mind the green the grass you
Watered then mowed this is something else
That which you lived and breathed
With its grass-cutter its water that which when you thought
– Let me die this isn’t fortune-telling this isn’t arrogance
But plain as day – this is your
God your demon
AGAIN
You arrive at nightfall
You stand under my window
Like toys or letterpress
Like it’s palpable your strangeness
You make paper mache flowers
You make new shapes unseen colors and lights
Make the world beautiful more beautiful still
A song spreads suddenly warmly
Your hands reach to cover my eyes
Upending all my habits
Nightfall arrives alongside you
How it spins around and around in the air
A flock breaking free from associations
The word like anxious birds
You hold a thousand-and-one sided mirror
From whichever side you look it shows death
Free yourself you plead break free from yourself
Forget your losses
Who judges you, who dares?
You arrive at nightfall
You stand under my window
Like toys or letterpress
Like it’s palpable your strangeness
BALLAD OF THE WILD GIRL III
What if I were to run into you on one of those big boulevards
Reach out my hand, grab yours and leave
Look into your eyes lock into your eyes and we didn’t talk
And what if you understood?
What if I were to reach out my hand but cannot hold
All of my love and my loneliness
And to think about them or no, not think
What if you had no idea
Well, you never have any idea
That ballad always begins and ends by itself
It rains and the acacias are drenched
Clouds wander the nighttime
I’m wild for rain wild for cloud
What you call living is just an elaborate game
I should either be loved or killed
You’ve got to lose everything on one of those great paths
You’ve got to start over as insects do
In this godforsaken darkness that even the rain can’t touch
Cry for your loneliness cry dear heart
What’s gone is gone
MOMMY
It’s painful to live without a cure painful
With such godsends at your elbow
What expands in your lungs breath by breath
Comes from a cloud a baby ant
In between knowing this and not knowing it
It’s painful to live without a cure painful
That boughs will eventually break for you
That you have a broken bough I’ll make you forget
Come quick sit right by me
Let loneliness be God’s share
Melancholy belongs to the night
Like saints or sinners it doesn’t matter
I come to you my hands my heart full
Right here at the other end of the world
I can steer the wind into your mill
TUESDAY IN FALL
Tuesday, the longest of the week
Time, he was saying, the best time of the day
Freedom oh Freedom lend me your hand I pray
Behind many walls
I’ve waited for you since I first found my way
He watched indifferently the leaves
Along the way falling in piles
I’d know, he whispered to himself, I’d know
They never give in to your heart’s desires
He walked his thoughts murky gray
Sparrows sped over his head undaring
Among the crowds of a great city
Despite it all he could feel he was living
ACCIDENT
His child eyes at first
Couldn’t realize he was crying for his own story
He casually leaned against the sky for one last time
One last time he looked for the blue
Nowhere to be seen
POEM ON ICE
This weather is this evening’s alone
This branch thus naked only this once
A dear friend will never again
Hold your hand hold it again with that same warmth
On such and such a day and time
You see a child like a portrait miniature
You see him and embrace him
Once again is it possible ever again
It’s over, it’s gone
A moment long in length deep in depth
Utterly beautiful in its beauty
One moment it’s there the next gone
My eyes deceive me a million times
Your hands you
If only you drop your hands and I my loneliness
If only we lived all the way
For the things that wouldn’t become this poem
This poem was written on ice
Once sung, it will be forgotten
Gülten Akın (1933-2015), one of the most important modern Turkish poets, emerged as a daring female voice in Turkey’s modernist literary movement, the İkinci Yeni (Second New). Known for blending idiomatic speech, folk rhythms, and a language rooted in intuition and gesture, Akın challenged and reshaped the established norms of modernist grammar and imagery. Despite her significant contributions to Turkish poetry, only a selection of her poems is available in English. The featured selection in this issue comes from her earliest poetry collection, Rüzgâr Saati (Wind Hour), showcasing her mastery and confidence even as a young poet.
Zeynep Özer is a poet and translator from Ankara, Turkey, with a particular interest in hybrid forms, lyric essays, and translation as a form of creative writing. After earning her MA in English and teaching at the University of Connecticut, she now lives in Chicago. She is currently working on translating the early poetry of Turkish modernist Gülten Akın (1933-2015) and the debut poetry collection of contemporary Turkish poet Enver Ali Akova.
World Poetry Review 