In the spirit of gratitude to the masters that have gone before us, and in the hopes of helping inject a moment’s worth of tranquility and reflection into a world that desperately needs some, I hereby present two poems by Turgut Uyar – one of the best poets who ever wrote in Turkish.
ONE DAY, EARLY IN THE MORN’
by Turgut Uyar
Let’s say I knock on your door early one morning,
And wake you up:
That is, the fog still hasn’t lifted off the Golden Horn
The ferry boats are blowing off their horns
It’s still the wee hours of the dawn
The bridge would still be up.
If I knock on your door one day early in the morn’ …
Let’s say my trip has taken me a while
The train has crossed over iron bridges in the night
Villages on top of the mountains with five or ten houses,
Telegraph poles along the route
They were running to keep up with us.
Let’s say I sang songs out from the window
Let’s say I kept dozing off and waking up again
My ticket was third class,
So much for poverty.
Let’s say I couldn’t afford that meerschaum necklace,
So I bought you an apple from Sapanca.
“Haydarpasa here I come,” is how I arrived
The ferry boat shimmering at the pier,
Somewhat of a chill in the air,
The sea smelling tar and fishes
Let’s say I crossed to the other side with a row boat from the bridge
In a single breath I climbed up our hill…
If I knock on your door in the wee hours of one morn’
“Who is it?” you’d ask sleepily from the other side
Your hair mussed up, still feeling groggy
God knows how beautiful you’d look my love,
If I knock on your door early one morning,
And wake you up from your sleep,
That is, the fog still hasn’t lifted off the Golden Horn
The factory whistles are blowing.
—
(translated from Turkish by Ugur Akinci)
# # #
BY THE THOUSANDS
by Turgut Uyar
Thousands of Mondays have passed from my life
Which one was it, I can’t tell
I just remember eating a cherry with a worm inside
That means it’s pretty old
And also all the stuff that doesn’t make sense
The lower part of a girl’s knee, for instance
And the ugly way a guy was smoking a cigarette
How one lives in this world under tutelage
Which crazies withstand this and how
It’s not my business to figure out anybody’s lineage
Shaping up my own story is enough for me
A beautiful afternoon
While remembering a beautiful old evening
Then things filled to the brim
Like the water-jugs
My insides well up
This should have an end, I say
But an end to what?
To these stone steps at least
—
(translated from Turkish by Ugur Akinci)
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