tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54150895676210157462024-03-13T14:31:44.267-07:00Poems by Mehmet YashinArun Omerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13853381943217494451noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5415089567621015746.post-3980639064348300692009-06-23T03:02:00.000-07:002009-06-24T09:07:11.093-07:00POEMS BY MEHMET YASHIN (1996-2007)*<span style="font-family:times new roman;">THE TYPEWRITER<br /><br />I remember that he used to wear white boxers, and where<br />he used to scratch… And that is the only image I have retained of him.<br />His papers, scattered around the house, and indeed, his boxers.<br />Not quite a vacuum but a huge blank with stains:<br />he should have left something for me as a souvenir.<br />I chose this typewriter myself that day, 50s, A-keyboard,<br />keys hardly shift, some characters appear crooked.<br />But I imagined him young, typing his love poems,<br />his fingers trembling with emotion –<br />then I imagined he gave it to me as a gift, when I was older,<br />this typewriter, his very first treasure.<br />I put it in the place of honour, in my room,<br />the oil-lamp shining on it through a smart chimney.<br /><br />And by recounting this story to everyone, time after time,<br />I began to believe that it was all true, what I had dreamed up!<br />In fact, to leave us behind he’d sold the whole kit and boodle,<br />and like a fearful sparrow pecking on discarded fruit,<br />I pulled this typewriter out<br />from a pile of his litter at our doorstep,<br />and hurried back into the house lest I should be called a thief.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">London, 2000 </span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE PETITION<br /><br />My only wish: To leave.Sto Kato-Makria<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn1" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a>. Just a motorcycle. And suddenly thistles. Those mauve flames i omorphi <a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn2" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn2" name="_ftnref2">[2]</a>. No brakes, no restraints in any way, kendimi özgür hissettiğim yerde<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn3" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn3" name="_ftnref3">[3]</a>. To make love, and each time it’s a first encounter. There, sea laurels and tulips of the fields kai ola ta louloudia<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn4" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn4" name="_ftnref4">[4]</a>. My feet abandon me like a yağmurkuşağı<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn5" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn5" name="_ftnref5">[5]</a> sanki bir tatlı-su-balığı<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn6" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn6" name="_ftnref6">[6]</a> in the water right after a rain-of-light. Just exchanging whispers with the seastones just çıplak ten<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn7" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn7" name="_ftnref7">[7]</a>. To leave. And right away. To set out on half-naked roads halfway. And what chair is that anyway to see that I stay put, all business + power. If lefta<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn8" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn8" name="_ftnref8">[8]</a> were millions it wouldn’t be worth spending ena lepto<a title="" style="mso-footnote-id: ftn9" href="http://www.blogger.com/post-edit.g?blogID=5415089567621015746&postID=398063906434830069#_ftn9" name="_ftnref9">[9]</a> or even a single second. Being as how the home of living is a planet of blue in a shell-from-the sea. And again love runs through me like a poem that again has an urge to go. And the islands redolent of thyme the islands redolent of thyme... Oh, especially thyme – No, no, please accept my resignation Dear Money I cannot pay you what you ask for...<br /><br />Because he was quickly growing old there, and was about to die from rising [while his soul, unable to bear the burden of a single poem, was crumbling.]<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">IstanPoli, 1993<br /><br />1 Sto Kato-Makria (Down Far-away, in Greek and Greek letters)<br />2 i omorphi (those beauties, in Greek and Greek letters)<br />3 “where I feel myself free” (originally in English, translated into Turkish)<br />4 kai ola ta louloudia (and all its flowers, in Greek and Greek letters)<br />5 “rainbow” (originally in English, translated into Turkish)<br />6 “like a freshwater-fish” (originally in English, translated into Turkish)<br />7 “naked flesh” (originally in English, translated into Turkish)<br />8 lefta (money, in Greek and Geek letters)<br />9 ena lepto (one minute, in Greek and Greek letters) (Translator’s note.)<br /></span><br /></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">CITIES WE RETURN TO<br /><br />i.<br />EVERYTHING IS JUST AS YOU LEFT IT... But you,<br />is it the same you, the one who left and the one who has found?<br />Your life wanders about for ten tens of years, but it’s at the same stop<br />that the trolleybus waits. The old telephone poles<br />that crack on the door window<br />and still, at the same hour, the lights are turned on by a shop boy.<br />But each time it’s different things that strike your eye<br />though the picture is the same: “How it has changed, this city”, you say<br />forgetting how much you yourself have changed.<br /><br />ii.<br />THERE ARE FLOWERS THAT PRESERVE THEIR COLOUR<br />EVEN AFTER THEY DIE and remembrances sound<br />from a distance like seashells touched and left ashore.<br />Like under-wear buried at the bottom of the luggage<br />some things are repressed deep, deep inside us<br />hidden even from ourselves … and like a childhood long since gone<br />with a single scent they bounce right back to us: Lost-<br />Nicosia, Lost-Constantinople, Lost-Salonika…<br />Then the road appears again to those with no city left to their name<br />to those who when asked “have you come back?” find no answer, not a sob<br />not in any language… nothing comes out. Naught…<br />A seagull of light flies, a fisherman’s boat, quickly receding into the distance<br />are the motorcycle-riding mermaids. And evening comes and wine.<br /><br />iii.<br />But I… I RETURN TO THE SAME PLACES AGAIN, AND AGAIN<br />waiting for the same things to happen<br />so as to make a few corrections in experiences past.<br />That I may enjoy more of myself perhaps<br />and that my life-line, that cataclysmic path,<br />might also clear, reaching toward me —<br />But how difficult it is to meet one’s own destiny<br />to recognize in time all the right signs<br />so as to find one’s true belongings, like a city<br />to which one must return.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Athens, 1997</span><br /><br /><br /><br />LIKE AN ACTOR WAITING FOR HIS PART<br /><br />First the acting lessons, the rehearsals<br />all that hustle and bustle on the way<br />those to-and-fros until you get used to the costumes…<br />Afterwards you’re called up in front of the mirror<br />The make-up takes hours and hours...<br />And now, waiting for your turn backstage<br />over and over you repeat to yourself your lines<br />thinking how long you’ve waited for this moment:<br /><br />– So that was it, all I was to do in life,<br />a three-minute play for a lifetime’s strife.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 1996</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE SUITCASE<br /><br />They broke into the house, the burglars<br />they wrenched open the solid lock of the leather suitcase…<br />we were hiding the mother-scent inside<br />to inhale furtively from time to time.<br />But they wrecked it –<br />mother’s pleated skirt, her lilac-tinted scarf, her twin set,<br />her gloves, her hand mirror,<br />her butterfly-eyeglasses, her apron with frills,<br />the dress she herself made, violets all over it,<br />her tartan skirt and jacket, her slippers,<br />her little silk handkerchief<br />the folding tourist map of Lebanon,<br />her exercise books, her fountain pen,<br />and her letters from friends –<br />dirt and dust, d u s t a n d d i r t . . .<br />Who cares what, which military quarters<br />the requisitioned House may be,<br />the calamity of war goes on and on,<br />once again there is a raid, again door locks are shattered,<br />and a life to be lived becomes looted.<br /><br />And looted, too, becomes a life already dead.<br /><br />They keep a List of Missing Belongings<br />once again in our House we insured in vain…<br />The insurance can never cover the scattered<br />photographs kept in an album of gazelle hide.<br /><br />Nor was it registered as a ‘valuable item’.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia-London, 1997-1998</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE LIST OF MISSING BELONGINGS<br /><br /><em>Missing from the bed-room:</em><br /><br />Not counting the fern, violet, tuberose and other flowers on the inner windowsill,<br />6 pairs seersucker sheets<br />,, ,, silk sheets<br />4 embroidered linen sheets (with 1 pair needlepoint, lace-trimmed pillowslips)<br />2 bolts loomed coarse cloth measured by the ell<br />and 5-6 ells linen, poplin and flannelette and woollen cloth measured by the ell<br />3 heirloom hand-printed cotton cloths (for making prayer rugs)<br />and tamboured wrapping cloths (unused)<br />2 sets purple and burgundy terry cloth (had never been used) and 1 bathrobe<br />,, ,, wipers and 6 pairs Bursa towels<br />and 1 pink gauze mosquito net (embroidered)<br />lace made by three generations of women in the family (partly used)<br />6 old-time handkerchiefs with silk lace edging<br />2 of my embroidered, unsewn nightgowns<br />and 1 dozen items silk underwear, 1 robe-de-chambre<br />1 dressing gown from olden days embroidered with silver thread (priceless)<br />and a matchless wedding gown belonging to granny (from the 1850s)<br />(velvet with golden embroidery, and lace-trimmed petticoat)<br />1 dress of astrakhan wool, 1 blouse of Scottish wool and its pleated skirt<br />2 embroidered Georgette head scarves (Beirut style).<br /><br />&<br /><br />And not counting such songbirds as the sparrow, whitethroat etc.<br />that perched on the window sill,<br />1 silk blanket, 3 woollen blankets, large and small<br />4 hand-printed cotton quilts (only recently covered)<br />,, small round cushions (with their spider-patterned slips)<br />1 pair of fancy high-heeled red shoes (barely used)<br />in addition, my evening dresses, perfumes, Pond facial day cream, scarves,<br />and other feminine items<br />1 hand mirror<br /><br />The jewellery I left on the bedstand when I fled at night is all gone:<br />1 pair of twisted gold bracelets<br />1 ornate silver bracelet and its pin (very special gift)<br />and my divers breastpins (ivory, embellished with an African magnet-stone, etc.)<br />1 heirloom orange agate ring, 2 gold amulets<br />,, English necklace strung with fine pearls.<br /><br />&<br /><br />We cannot leave out our Tabby cat who came in and out of the bedroom through the window,<br />and 2 medium-sized flags (one Cypriot, the other Turkish)<br />14 ready-to-wear shirts (cotton, woollen, satin, silk, linen)<br />4 ells cashmere (for making pants, beige, to use when the kid grows up)<br />6-7 small monogrammed hankies (the kid’s)<br />and a large number of toys (partly used)<br />the kid’s panda teddy bear (old, but it was his dearest)<br /><br />And manuscript Ottoman Turkish books passed down by grandfather (priceless)<br />1 Holy Bible and a World Atlas (The Times)<br />divers books (Turkish, English) and children’s fairy-tales<br />1 ream writing paper<br />,, batch envelopes<br />1 fountain pen (keepsake from my teaching years at the Shakespeare Primary School)<br />and other such pens, my little calling card envelopes<br />1 lampshade.<br /><br />&<br /><br />Not counting the spring landscape I painted while in high school and which hung on the wall,<br />1 old-time wall clock<br />3 fringed gauze curtains that I had embroidered with coloured silk thread<br />(the first piece I had done for my trousseau)<br />and in addition 5 bolts drapery<br />1 large Turkish carpet, 2 small rugs<br />1 complete set Lefkara lace<br />,, ,, ,, needlework<br />1 Apollo (stone statue, from Rhodes, 1954)<br />,, kerosene stove<br /><br />1 box inlaid with mother-of-pearl (containing promissory notes, a pass book, certificates,<br />my personal letters, photographs and other such documents)<br />1 set shoehorn and coat-brush with handle<br />1 camera (unused)<br />and all the other as yet unopened New Year’s presents<br />,, ,, our ants, moths and other winged insects that we couldn’t count…<br /><br />&<br /><br /><em>Other damage in the bed-room:</em><br /><br />(First they set the bed-room on fire) from the wooden flooring,<br />to the crystal chandelier on the ceiling everything was burned<br />the legs of the chaise longue were broken, and partly burned<br />the fabrics, clothes and other items they couldn’t loot were burned<br />my walnut bed and wardrobe were largely burned<br />and the mirrors inside the wardrobe were all broken,<br />the glass covering the photos on the walls was broken, as were the frames<br />the kid’s photo was torn up because it hadn’t burned<br /><br />That torn child is me, in the Missing List<br />searching still for his name, so as to reunite with himself.<br />And I thank you a 1000 times my Good Lord:<br />Luckily I was lost, luckily I am not a single person and in a single little home…<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">* Taken and rearranged from the ‘Ledger of Lost and Damaged Goods’ dated January 10-20, 1964, which my mother Ayşe Süleyman (İpçizâde) had kept when her house was plundered and burned during the Bloody Christmas of 1963. </span><br /><br /><br /><br />BUTTERFLYWINDOW<br /><br />A step child is a must in any family with many children<br />in yours no doubt it was you.<br />One of your full siblings is a girl, the other a boy<br />and you in the middle… To stop the untamed butterfly<br />from flying off or something<br />you were a boarder, far off<br />not so, in your very own room. Your bicycle was stolen, so<br />you’re sent to school on foot –<br />From the automobile your siblings watch you, like the photograph of two crying kids<br />clinging to the rearwindow<br />so that you don’t accidentally forget you’re punished<br />and should a smile spread across your face as you walk alone.<br />The chance to bemoan your state as if a victim was a favour<br />granted by your parents, who loved to seek pity like martyrs<br />You should have been the Abel of the tribe later on<br />an undecreed-fate where you’d be seized and exiled<br />was granted you even then so that you could build your career as a victim,<br />you never knew its worth… “See” say your parents<br />peeping through their eyeglasses, like rearview mirrors:<br />“Who would have taken you outdoors if it weren’t for us!”<br />You were like a guest with whom a distance should be preserved<br />in the Yashin’s home, but they greeted you warmly<br />with such intimacy that it was almost rude –<br />You felt the breath of the family on the nape of your neck as they,<br />in their automobile, kept driving a w a y<br /><br /><em>l u c k i l y y o u , o f f y o u f l e w , f l u t t e r f l u t t e r</em> through<br />a gap no wider than the butterflywindow.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">London, 2000</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THIEF OF SOULS<br /><br />Solomon’s knot: I bone, frit, molded pâte de verre<br />leaf upon leaf of madder lake and sundial. [Reprise]<br /><br />Stepfather, stepsibling and who knows how many step-<br />lovers have stolen you. For the thief of souls<br />lies within one’s own-home. Full mothers can also be stepmothers<br />and husbands are mostly stephusbands.<br />The one who steels your soul the most is the one nearest you, actually it is you<br />who opens the door and eagerly lets him in.<br />It was to be expected, eyes, evil ones, were to be upon you<br />but rivals, imitators, enemies cannot be your thief of souls.<br />The thief of souls is the poet’s translator. He turns you into himself,<br />or else he turns his face away from you. He discovers your very essence<br />and seeps within you as if seizing you.<br />He becomes you, but only until he’s satisfied, you…<br />You’ll recognize the thief of souls by this:<br />He’ll say “I love you so much that I am you”. He’ll show his favour<br />and his lovemaking is avid. My soul, turn to stone.<br />Isn’t the world stone anyway? Fire, washed with water in the air?<br />My soul, stop at the dragon-guarded cave. Stay in the rocks.<br />My tongue, turn to stone. For everything is dying<br />the body in the rock tomb is rotting. Even the soul.<br /><br />O CaroV1 Boatman of souls, I am carved in stone.<br />Though your sails fill with dead breaths, my soul is stone. [Reprise]<br /><br />I am a sharply pointed broken piece of rock: Solomon’s-knot.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Antioch, 1999<br /><br />[1] Kharos: The Death Angel. (Translator’s note.)</span><br /><br /><br /><br />IN THE WELL: The Evil Writing<br /><br />“Your well is in bad shape” they said:<br />We held a mirror, no reflection, we threw a stone not a sssingle<br />hisss… (Sending down a diver would be pointless.) I’m all dried up inside,<br />snakes, all slippery and slimy, and worms of all sorts, and rubble.<br />Now I am in squalor<br />I’m in a stuffy and dark place<br />(perhaps a thousand layers lower than a normal grave)<br />I, I am a person who has been sacrificed to the dragon<br />by the very hands of the knight who has saved my life. Cover me! Cover me up,<br />for I am an evil corpse.<br />(I had seen so much evil done in the name of good that,<br />well, I have become evil myself.) Don’t read!<br />Please don’t read me,<br />for by constantly writing about evil I make you forget the good.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">London-Nicosia, 2001</span><br /><br /><br /><br />ALL DAY LONG<br /><br />She took a bath and left…<br /><br />You, you neither took a bath<br />nor did you get out of bed.<br />All day long you just lay there<br />hugging the pillow where she’d laid her head.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />IN BED<br /><br />She slides to the foot of the bed and curls up facedown<br />as if she weren’t lying with you.<br />In the closed mirrored little music box<br />where a ballerina dances,<br />in the silk cocoon of the baby pink shoes she is sleeping<br />as if she weren’t sleeping… She’s pulled the sheet<br />altogether. You’re stripped. She’s covered.<br />And you can’t even open the mirrored music-box.<br />You get up and look into a Book of Dreams<br />so that you can solve the meaning of all this<br />in the bed where you lie all alone… As if there were someone else<br />who in their sleep had dreams that belong to you.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />LOVEMAKING<br /><br />Then with harsh words you drive off the poetry-muse who came to kiss you on the [forehead…<br /><br />You don’t really mind the flapping wings. In the twilight<br />it is the fragile sound of the nightingale you want.<br />You hear with the ears of another, all strewn about... Your body<br />is not yours. Your lips… your hands, your organs are unattainably distant.<br />Every part of you now belongs to her.<br />You are a malignant tumour growing in her breast<br />she, the gigantic leech that devours your crotch<br />and you are claws that are like wings sunk backward into her shoulders.<br />Passion reigns over you… You are obsessed,<br />like your own assassin, stabbed into the one that lies in your heart<br />you’ve driven between you like a knife the power to give.<br />The ultimate signs of love in the depths… Out of the circumciser’s bag come the razor,<br />the tongued-knife, the spiral fork, slippery condoms<br />and chains that slice at the wrist as it stirs. Inside a poem<br />the passion that has been lurking in ambush for so long has captured you both.<br />You cannot unravel from love.<br />You can’t put back on the clothes you removed as if ripping off the buttons.<br />The moment you are stark naked a satyr emerges out of you,<br />it emerges that you are of the creatures that were thought to be extinct… She saw your [secret.<br />She has no place to run! You strip her from herself too,<br />hoping a mythical foal will come out<br />with mule’s hooves, a long seashell horn and w h i t e w i n g s.<br /><br />You don’t make love, but fight with love. Two creatures each with two horns<br />who knows where they’ve come from. You, you roll on the ground.<br />She kicks and flails her body,<br />like a cat trying to milk caresses from the earth and rocks. You bare your teeth<br />and mount the neck of the swallow. She wipes her blood-smeared beak on your mouth.<br />A mole trying to hide its prey deep inside the labyrinthine earth<br />tugging and hauling it. Holding onto her beach-blond feathered wings,<br />her scrawny elbows, you drag her. And with a rapacious axe<br />you slash your own body in two<br />and a crimson rose garden spurts out of your breast…<br />She becomes all the birds as she f l a p s h e r w i n g s<br />and you, the pack of wolves that piles upon the partridge.<br /><br />As you bite you turn into a three-tongued dragon, a yellow snake, a flittermouse, a [shahmeran,<br />into the half-human creature that doesn’t recall the murder it committed in the half-night.<br />She, she incites you with her hand drawing you inside her and aiming a kick at the same [time<br />rolling her tongue in your contracted groin and biting<br />with teeth that keep growing in the full moon. You shed w h i t e screams<br />f e a t h e r b y f e a t h e r… This is not love! It’s a mortal clash<br />between two souls that desire to escape their bodies.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE KISSLING<br /><br />Everything should be poetry. To die for! There should be love, or you won’t play.<br />And life should be as strong as death. As if poetry and love<br />were one... You should become one with all.<br />A pendulum swings in the emptiness of existence,<br />hitting mountain peaks at times and the waves of the sea at others.<br /><br />As the strength to hold your breath grows weak you should surface<br />so as to plunge back into the same game after inhaling once.<br />Fine but hey nobody’s obliged to give you the kiss of life.<br />So it’s your trouble and yours alone that you’re a strange player<br />with wind-like wings who can only survive between fire and water.<br /><br />That’s what you say, though you want those you make yourself read to see<br />the poem you lay with cleft pomegranates ablaze at your feet<br />Yet the readers do dabble in the doodles of poetry<br />and they do plant a kiss on you for love of those fine details, occasionally.<br />You collect the kisslings<br /><br />hoping they’ll turn into a long big one. [But nothing<br />comes of kissing.]<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 2005</span><br /><br /><br />DRUNKEN GAB<br /><br />(With lights that turn from mauve to orange.) The Sun<br />was erasing the stars when rrrring the door… You opened it.<br /><br />– I want to kiss you (Drunken voice.)<br />– Are you going to kiss me to wake yourself up?<br />What if this kiss costs you your life?<br /><br />He was the empty wine-glass in broad daylight<br />waiting for you to fill him up, over and over, a trace of scarlet at the bottom.<br />He recited you a poem using your lips (dancing voice):<br /><br /></span><a name="OLE_LINK1"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">– </span></a><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Here’s to the dear companions, wherever they go I follow! Coo coo cooo...<br /><br />– My life (he says in a fit of coughing) can be the price.<br />I’ve given up myself, and my life too.<br />There was so much that was left unsaid last night, and now it’s so late.<br />– Intimacy with words, you see, it’s all futility.<br /><br />(As silence draws out let the reeds sound forth, rich in harmony). Hush<br />at the mention of water let a well of wine open up and sound spill out from the pipe.<br /><br />– Whatever… I’ll lie down till evening<br />and we can pick up talking from where we left off tonight.<br /><br />(Whereas it still went on since yesterday that night half-finished for both of them.)<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Cambridge, 2007</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE FISHERMAN<br /><br />The spongelike rock<br />which rolled down from the mountain<br />must be nice and soft, imagines the fish.<br /><br />Hollowed seashells<br />that have washed ashore;<br />heedless of their petrifaction,<br />the child lets them off into the waves<br />as if what’s been killed<br />by this-life, could live anew.<br /><br />The salt imbibed on the rib of the boat<br />the purple smell of thyme<br />on the bosom of the marine rocks…<br />And amidst all this beauty<br />only in the loved one does Beauty become incarnate,<br />transforming into a legend<br />quite suitable for the art of poetry.<br /><br />The fisherman who gave its title to the poem<br />is unaware of the beauty that’s his own.<br />Yet beauty too would like to be known<br />so as to reveal itself on the surface of the sea,<br />so that the soul may bear the body<br />and the body the soul.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Monargia village/Famagusta, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE STATUE<br /><br />Oh that its body could but speak half carved out of the rock in the waterfall<br />it cannot free itself from the stone it is stuck on.<br />Be it as beautiful as the statue of an ancient deity, a statue it is, after all. A narcissus flower,<br />its smell, form, colour... But in its hand no mirror.<br />It has no water, no bed to flow on, no door to open to...<br /><br />Oh key, tiny key The water nymph is locked in on herself.<br />She’s called upon a locksmith from out of the waters<br />unknowing that she holds you in the palm of her hand.<br />And when the door is opened... there, a white... Empty space<br />where is left the statue of a deity. They’ve forbidden it to dance, to play the lyre,<br />to sing. Or to suddenly run about, or even to embrace.<br />It has lain there for centuries buried under the earth, its poetry<br />a gutted language. It is forbidden to speak. The way colours to a painter, and sounds a musician would be forbidden…<br /><br />You gently draw near. You nuzzle up like a benign little vermin. Hisss…<br />Besides, what can a statue ask of you really? As beautiful as marble of ivory<br />but marble it is, in the end,<br />though you make love repeatedly you can never unite with this body.<br />You touch it with increasing fervour to tame its coldness. Either its flesh<br />will come alive or yours too will turn to stone. You look, one last time,<br />but there’s nothing more beautiful to cling to.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Salamis/Famagusta-Nicosia, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE CURVE<br /><br />You cherish his feet. Its curved sole.<br />Its ankle so strong it won’t hurt one bit<br />when stepping on the earth... After all, mermaids can’t show<br />the pain they feel each time they step on land.<br />She tilts her head with her will-o’-the-wispy hair and looks with awe<br />at her feet from your eyes. This and that way<br />turn about the words spoken in reverse<br />in hula-hooping curves… You cherish<br />the trim of the nacre shadow of her toenails. Her slender legs<br />that broaden slightly and rise up to her calves…<br />Reminiscent here and there of the wing of a white bird with yellow feathers<br />her toes excite you as if they might fly off any moment now.<br />Yet they do not fly. She steps on the ground upright and straight. Almost rigid.<br />And she goes off without a falter… Drawing a curve<br />toward you, while growing distant on the sand –<br />You cherish the way he hides his foot’s-heel from you.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Aya Irini village/Kormaditi, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE BEACH-TOWEL<br /><br />The laurels scratch you as you come out of the sea.<br />–All you can think of is that she will catch cold with her wet bathing suit<br />you even feel her trembling hips, though you can’t see<br />the scratches left by sharp branches…–<br />You hand her your towel for her to dry herself,<br />when she gives it back to you, you say “No need, keep it<br />or I’ll feel sad when I remember this moment,<br />whereas you can both remember me and not feel sad.”<br />Then she goes to the shower and washes the beach-towel<br />and gives it to you all cleaned up<br />leaving no trace of the smell of the sea or the bay leaves.<br /><br />–But the next day it rasps your skin<br />that beach-towel which the rough salt has stiffened like sandpaper.–<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Aya Irini village/Kormadti, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE KING<br /><br />They’ve set a trap for you. A rather tall person, somewhat like the sun<br />shadowy though. I’m confused, he says<br />my life is a mess. Whereas its in the world beyond<br />that your conversion belongs.<br />It is the infinite confusion of the body and the soul. A battlefield,<br />pell-mell. Piercing shrieks. You are mum<br />it will cause you real agony. No exit in sight.<br />Your stars are crossed. This person will have no rest till he vanquishes you,<br />even then he must also vanquish himself.<br />But he doesn’t know he is combating you. He holds a sceptre in his hand.<br />There’s the letter “A”, and omega too. You go through a door,<br />something like a monastery entrance, the priests are reciting the salah*.<br />Tell me your dates of birth and death. Three candles on each wing.<br />The cock is out, it doesn’t crow, and neither can it fly.<br />In court he defends his client who has done wrong,<br />you are tried, he has your proxy.<br />This is a kingdom that continues to fight as its army is routed.<br />You were the one to crown him. You bow to his firman. A spear<br />is hurled by him, you don’t dodge, look… He is your king.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Istanbul-Nicosia, 2006<br /><br />* Salah: The Muslim prayer recited after the dead (Translator’s note.)<br />** Firman: An Ottoman imperial edict or decree (Translator’s note.)<br /></span><br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br />THE CAGE<br /><br />He checks his watch with every sip from his drink, he explains<br />to the phone in his inside pocket. Pardon me, but let’s talk straight<br />though we sit awry, we’re at a tavern table.<br />I once saw quails on offer in a desert market<br />they were perched on the counter, as if singed and ready to cook.<br />There were rings and such on their legs.<br />No, they’re free… Can’t you see, they don’t fly off mate!<br />Fly fly fly I flap my wings, nope, they don’t fly.<br />The chap who assessed the situation right in the middle of making love<br />checked his watch again, loosened his tie a bit<br />then folded his wings and neatly put them in his briefcase.<br />I must go home early again. Ok, tomorrow evening then?.. Don’t think so.<br />I don’t think so either, and why spend money on a cage<br />I saw it with my own eyes I tell you, they don’t fly, the quails.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 2006</span><br /><br /><br /><br />DEAR SORROW<br /><br />Why did I feel sad then, you say.<br />Perched on the edge of a chair at a flowing and ebbing shorefront café,<br />and unable to find a place to park your backpack, you listen<br />to those words of yearning,<br />which she spoke as she averted her gaze... [It’s a game,<br /><br />when she flees you catch her, when she catches you flee.<br />The light is stuck in the hardened crystal.<br />Everything can be laughed off now.<br />Impossible to go with someone who has so grieved you,<br />then you can go now it won’t make a difference anymore.]<br /><br />Alright, you say, but how can I give up my Sorrow,<br />suddenly say, let’s split up having lived together<br />so long, just because you’re back...<br />I’ll have to feel sad some day in any case<br />a shame if my sorrow instalments went to waste.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Istanbul-Nicosia, 2006</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE HEDGEHOG<br /><br />I’m a hedgehog, you said haughtily.<br />(What could you have done, you had to put on airs of haughtiness<br />to be paid some attention.)<br />I’m a hedgehog, you said once again<br />sternly bucking as if you were threatening.<br />Translucent and so soft, as if made of water<br />your body opened up<br />suddenly. As for him, his hair was all spiked up.<br />It was night. And you were by yourselves<br />there where the devil dares to shave himself.<br />I can cause accidents in your life<br />even if you don’t tread on me unshod but with a car,<br />is what you tried to say, I think.<br />(Oh I dunno, maybe it was something else<br />you were really saying.)<br />I’m a hedgehog, you said for the third time.<br />Strange, he murmured, that you should want to draw me to you<br />by repeatedly saying you’re dangerous,<br />oh you blind fool… said you and right then<br />you blinded yourself!<br /><br />So you’re looking for a friend, then come<br />play blindman’s buff with me.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 2004</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE MOUNTAINEER<br /><br />There you lie against the world, like a distant dirty piece of ice<br />in the hollow where you’re trapped. Your knees are drawn up to your chest<br />trembling as if wishing never to have been born. And not feeling<br />the pain caused by the rock-shoes either…<br />You rub your fingers together, trying to revive the stiffened life<br />inside. Nothing can be stronger than your solitude.<br />In the shadow of the hollow like a womb that before bearing you died, cold<br />are the blows blown by the wind, which does not let you forget your solitude, not one [minute.<br /><br />A little further on, the sunbeams… The impossible<br />avalanche would fall were you to motion toward life. Your body is glacier stone<br />to you it does not belong. And you are doubtful you’re alive.<br />Belay stations on the mountain you are climbing, none. Were you to fall, none,<br />no escape. All a-whistle o’er your head are the sharp stones …<br />Your rock-shoes would not withstand the ice, nor your helmet the stone. Your heart, [frozen,<br />almost. Nothing can be stronger than your solitude.<br />The mountain is cramping you by the instant. It is drawing you in like a foetus.<br /><br />Climbing the chimney in front of you with that huge backpack, it’s impossible.<br />You emptied your life for a light and rapid climb;<br />what a shame… While leading the climb<br />the others went on not paying heed to the rocks that rolled on your head. And the rope<br />is swinging. Your feet are swinging… The minute you grab hold you roll down<br />into the abyss bumping along as the rope stretches out and back. You’ve become stone,<br />a stone of cloud that has lost its balance. Your breath is foggy<br />foggy stone. Nothing can be stronger than your solitude.<br /><br />The mountain is stronger. You are stronger than the mountain. As rigid<br />as solitude… Soon night will fall and crushing you the stars will all<br />proceed. Your heart is shivering, and I am shivering too.<br />For from the mountain I cannot rescue you, I cannot be stronger than your solitude.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Kantara mountain-Nicosia, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE DREAMFAIRY<br /><br />i<br />(You didn’t write this, someone must have written it, by mistake<br />they got mingled in your verses, these words that belong elsewhere…)<br />The child playing hide-and-seek<br />appeared and disappeared. He must have hidden really well, you couldn’t find him.<br />You didn’t think of looking into yourself.<br />The child sees you, no need for him to look. In his sleep,<br />the book was left open at the page he was reading so the dream slipped into it.<br />You’re on the sinister mountain. Out there, a lake,<br />but you can’t reach it however much you walk. Always the same place: A dream.<br />What you were looking for, you can’t remember. You keep wandering<br />as if looking for something<br />in the dream-room…<br /><br />ii<br />The rind of the full moon peeled off and the moonlight broke up in seven pieces<br />that were scattered all about. Flakelets of snow spread a blanket on the steep forest.<br />And the dreamfairy, twisting the corner of the cover<br />whispered the name of the dream you would wish to have. You fell asleep<br />in your sleep. All you remember is the sound ‘S’. Curled up<br />you try to tell your body from hers.<br />You see the door, but how does one open it and go through?<br />The letter ‘S’ is in bed. (A twin body<br />its upper right and its lower left disjunct.) You whistle to each other.<br />Your legs, your neck, you stretch, slackening, as they rub<br />against you. You wonder what part of you this bloody ‘S’ comes from…<br />You sneaked among the reeds, where she could lead you without much fuss<br />that barren, boggy corner… There, you started rummaging everywhere,<br />what you’ve found, you can’t see. Strangely<br />smiles at you the self in the dream.<br />(It’s the rictus on the face of the dead, you’re not going to like this.)<br /><br />iii<br />If you wake up, a feeling of emptiness.<br />For one thing, you don’t have a bed in which to wake up together.<br />Nights, but a three-inch space, on the verge of falling,<br />there’s not enough room to comfortably turn, back into the dream,<br />to stretch out at will…<br />There’s no one you’d like to run into. So, sleep is your country,<br />fairies and goblins, their magic lies in a den, their hideout,<br />the pearl is inside the oyster,<br />eenie meenie miney moe, the world is nowhere to be found.<br />You last remember how kissing left you breathless<br />and the moment you felt your heartbeat on her breast.<br />The sea set sail from navy blue to nacre<br />and diving toward the depths it all grew transparent.<br />Then the moon rose. The waters became incarnate<br />in their own mirror. In the gateway of the sky where the stars drove nail holes<br />a vague gleam… But the brass latch of the sun is locked<br />Look, nothing shows clearly by the light of day.<br />You can’t get anywhere by walking.<br /><br />iv<br />You closed the book. When the Orange Bird spread out its wings<br />you found yourself in it. Well then, it was supposed to be in you, the universe<br />within a migrant bird… Meanwhile autumn,<br />straining to turn the leaves green again<br />the rain d r i p d r i p d r i p into emptiness.<br />They watch you, the giant-maidens undoing their golden buttons<br />even though the trees are unstirring, they follow you hand in hand,<br />as you hurry on so do they<br />your spectres. That which is closer than any person<br />just as the unreality of dreams is the realest thing of all.<br />You know how someone who dreams he is a bird<br />when he wakes up is unsure whether he’s a bird or not?<br />Ask whom he might he can’t know the truth. And the Gods<br />fill all that has vanished with their being,<br />just like the loved one is obliterated within the feeling of love. And as the soul,<br />giddy on love, m i n g l e s w i t h t h e l i g h t…<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Cambridge, 2006</span><br /><br /><br /><br />AT DAYBREAK<br /><br />The light is dimmer on this side of the mountain. It seeps through the purple<br />clouds… The stone house below<br />is where I was born. Two rooms inside connect through wide arches… The olive grove,<br />trees planted somewhat apart so they don’t touch, how strange<br />it suddenly ends at the slope.<br />There’s a growing feeling in this deserted land that reminds me of my childhood<br />an urge to run… On and on<br />I just stand there though, as if running in the dimness of the mountain<br />it’s my heart. I think it’s my childhood<br />that’s running. It’s five weeks that I’ve been here it’s the first time<br />I’ve spoken of myself to someone.<br />A village on the border. And the ruins are guarded by soldiers<br />who don’t speak… Photographs,<br />don’t let them see me taking them like a tourist in my hometown how strange.<br />I don’t do anything here. Come sunset<br />the fields catch fire and then die down.<br />Way over there a brook serpentines toward the reeds… Under the noon sun<br />the days become orange light-birds streaming down the mountain.<br />The earth is white but, well it’s nice and firm<br />for the vineyard that is… And here I’ve also learned to wake up before the roosters.<br />Stay this evening, let’s walk toward the morning camera in hand…<br /><br />(But sunrise was such a short moment that we couldn’t take its photograph.)<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 2005</span><br /><br /><br /><br />FRIVOLITY<br /><br />He does the frivolous things that a very solitary person would do:<br />He drinks wine at the foot of the stairs, going up and down<br />as if there was no one in the crowd<br />besides himself. Whoever comes, let it be perforce, in his wake.<br />And they can apologize in Italian afterwards.<br />He leafs through other people’s photo albums<br />black gloves on his hands. He looks for a companion<br />on the loners’ site of the internet,<br />a stranger he can put up, just for a few nights, in the room at the back,<br />you know, where the shakedown is raised against the wall.<br />Bit by bit life turns into a story<br />with no interior monologues. And for his vague imaginary<br />lovers he sends attachments to his own sweetheart<br />When you read these, “So then” you said<br />“It seems I didn’t exist for your.” (You said it in Italian.)<br /><br />– Not at all, you are so enormously there<br />that this burden has to be lightened.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia-Istanbul, 2006-2007</span><br /><br /><br /><br />IN THE POOL<br /><br />So it seems this is where everybody was!<br />Above the full moon submerged in the pool,<br />as if she has long since been mixed up<br />with the same waters. With the familiarity of<br />drawing under the same lines... Even in the moonlight<br />this is soothing.<br /><br />You don’t have to explain anything to anyone,<br />nor row among the waves,<br />for the love of seas of doubtful friendship<br />which you’ll first set out on… Even in the moonlight<br />this is saddening.<br /><br />So it seems there are those who are in the pool,<br />and those outside.<br />And it seems this little puddle<br />is all you’ll ever swim in… By the pool, bleeding heart<br />honeysuckle, lady-of-the-night.<br /><br />Up there a starry starry starry starry<br />infinity… You dive<br />for a breath of fresh air in that pool<br />where you feel all choked up.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Nicosia, 2006</span><br /><br /><br /><br />THE GLOVES<br /><br />He confessed his crime in writing,<br />without realising what he was doing.<br />Here it is, the proof:<br />what you are reading just now.<br />Eye to eye, hand in hand…<br />The murder was committed<br />wearing these gloves.<br />On a cold night he struck<br />All the keys of the computer,<br />Struck again and again.<br />Then they were washed and cleaned.<br />The gloves, like the poet’s severed hands<br />dangling on the clothes line –<br />Severed by himself.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;">Catania/Sicily, 2004</span><br /><br /><br /><br />*NOTES:<br />These translations were made by Linda Stark from the poems published in the following books:<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Mehmet Yashin (Yaşın), To Repair a Daydream/Hayal Tamiri (1998, Istanbul: Adam; 2007, Istanbul: Everest)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Mehmet Yashin (Yaşın), Its Name is in the List of Missing Belongings /Adı Kayıplar Listesinde (2002, Istanbul: YKY; 2007, Istanbul: Everest)<br /></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Mehmet Yashin (Yaşın), Orange Bird/Turuncu Kuş (2007, Istanbul: Everest) </span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Copyrights of these poems belong to Mehmet Yashin and Linda Stark, and they are used by Arun Omer in this blog with their permissions.<br /><br />These poems were not included in Mehmet Yashin's poetry books in English which are:<br /><br />Mehmet Yashin, Don't Go Back to Kyrenia (translated by Taner Baybars and edited by Peter Bush, 2001, London: Middlesex University Press World Literature Series) </span><a href="http://www.middlesexuniversitypress.com/"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">www.middlesexuniversitypress.com</span></a><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Mehmet Yashin, Wartime (translated by Taner Baybars, 2007, Essex: The Hapy Dragons' Press) <a href="http://www.happydragonspress.co.uk/">http://www.happydragonspress.co.uk/</a></span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;">Please see </span><a href="http://www.mehmetyashin.com/"><span style="font-family:times new roman;">http://www.mehmetyashin.com/</span></a><span style="font-family:times new roman;"> for further information on Mehmet Yashin and his publications.</span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:Times New Roman;"></span><br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><br /><br /></span>Arun Omerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13853381943217494451noreply@blogger.com0