For further reading again go to that wonderful website, Turkish Poetry in Translation. Here follows some chosen poems from that collection with brief comments of mine...It will be followed by a further part with different poets. My love for Dağlarca is clearly felt in this first part, most poems are his but I hope you will also find them masterful as I do.
Ahmed Haşim
A poetic land is imagined here; a romantic idea of the lost beauty in things. I think it is a poem which would make even the most prolific French poets proud...
PROMISED LAND
Let it play with your hair, this gentle breeze
Blowing from the seven seas.
If only you knew
How lovely you are the way you gaze at the edge of the night
Steeped in the greef of exile and longing, in sorrow.
Neither you
Nor I
Nor the dusk that gathers in your beauty
Nor the blue sea.
That safe harbour for the distress that assaults the brain-
We spurn the generation which knows nothing of the soul's pain.
Mankind today
Brands you merely a fresh slender woman
And me just an old fool.
That wretched appetite, that filthy sight
Can find no meaning in you or me
Nor a tender grief in the night
Nor the sullen tremor of secrecy and disdain
On the calm sea.
You and I
And the sea
And the night that seems to gather silently,
Without trembling, the fragrance of your soul,
Far away
Torn asunder from the land where blue shadows hold sway,
We are forever doomed to this exile here.
That land?
Stretches along the chaste regions of imagination, and
A blue nightfall
Reposes there for all;
At its outer edges, the sea
Pours the calm of sleep on each soul...
There, women are lovely, tender, nocturnal, pure.
Over their eyes your sadnes hovers,
They are all sisters or lovers:
The tearful kisses on their lips can cure,
And the indigo quiet of their inquiring eyes
Can soothe the heart's suffering.
Their souls are violets
Distilled from the night of despair,
In a ceaseless search for silence and repose.
The dim glare from the moon's sorrows
Finds haven in their immaculate hands.
Ah, they are so frail-
The mute anguish they share,
The night deep in thought, the ailing sea ...
They all resemble each other there.
That land
Is on which imaginary continent, and
Dimmed by what distant river?
Is it a land of illusions- or real,
A utopia bound to remain unknown forever?
I do not know ... All I know is
You and I and the blue sea
And the dusk that vibrates in me
The strings of inspiration and agony,
Far away
Torn asunder from the land where blue shadows hold sway
We are forever doomed to this exile here.
Ahmet Hasim (1884-1933)
Translated by Talat Sait Halman
Nazım Hikmet
His best achievement I believe is a poem called "Straw-blond" or "Saman Sarısı" in Turkish, which is of such a high caliber, I mean it may be the greatest poem ever written. Unfortunately I am just able to quote the poems found in the collection but they are also quite representative of his style...
The first poem is catching us in a very good picture, even more applicable for these days where there is no sign of a significant opposition other than the Occupy movement perhaps. Yes we are guilty...
THE STRANGEST CREATURE ON EARTH
You're like a scorpion, my brother,
you live in cowardly darkness
like a scorpion.
You're like a sparrow, my brother,
always in a sparrow's flutter.
You're like a clam, my brother,
closed like a clam, content,
And you're frightening, my brother,
like the mouth of an extinct volcano.
Not one,
not five-
unfortunately, you number millions.
You're like a sheep, my brother:
when the cloaked drover raises his stick,
you quickly join the flock
and run, almost proudly, to the slaughterhouse.
I mean you're strangest creature on earth-
even stranger than the fish
that couldn't see the ocean for the water.
And the oppression in this world
is thanks to you.
And if we're hungry, tired, covered with blood,
and still being crushed like grapes for our wine,
the fault is yours-
I can hardly bring myself to say it,
but most of the fault, my dear brother, is yours.
Nazim Hikmet - 1947
Nazım Hikmet was not just some local poet, his communist internationalism was not indifferent to the events of the world, a man of world or rather universe, his heart beat with the most distant stars...
ANGINA PECTORIS
If half my heart is here, doctor,
the other half is in China
with the army flowing
toward the Yellow River.
And, every morning, doctor,
every morning at sunrise my heart
is shot in Greece.
And every night,c doctor,
when the prisoners are asleep and the infirmary is deserted,
my heart stops at a run-down old house
in Istanbul.
And then after ten years
ALL I HAVE TO OFFER MY POOR PEOPLE
IS THIS APPLE IN MY HAND, DOCTOR,
ONE READ APPLE:
MY HEART.
AND THAT, DOCTOR, THAT IS THE REASON
FOR THIS ANGINA PECTORIS-
NOT NICOTINE, PRISON, OR ARTERIOSCLEROSIS.
I look at the night through the bars,
and despite the weight on my chest
MY HEART STILL BEATS WITH THE MOST DISTANT STARS.
NAZIM HIKMET
[1948]
Being a communist he spent many years in jail and then was forced to go to exile in USSR in 1950 where he spent his last 13 years of life. This is one little extract from a longer poem written in prison:
TODAY IS SUNDAY
Today is Sunday.
For the first time they took me out into the sun today.
And for the first time in my life I was aghast
that the sky is so far away
and so blue
and so vast
I stood there without a motion.
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion
leaning against the white wall.
Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll
Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now.
The soil, the sun and me...
I feel joyful and how.
NAZIM HIKMET
Translated by Talat Sait Halman.
(Literature East & West, March 1973)
Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca
The vast range of themes and styles existing in his poems are unbelievable. However I have to note that his use of Turkish is so original and perfect that it is much better to read him from his original language. I mean the double meanings are lost in translation. But this doesn't mean you can't grasp his poems in English. No comments for his poems, just enjoy.
Faces on Symbols
He comes on a beam of light.
He comes.
Sparkling,
You love the earth and the sky
All the way to the plea of the awakened slaves.
The urge of the seeds fills your heart.
You stand taller
From a memory to the future in a lunge of green.
Water comes to a sleepless man.
A forest comes from the wakeful winds.
The solitude
Of the stars
And the lakes goes away.
You are left alone,
Face to face with all you have done, starknaked.
You had seized
And struck.
Meadows were full of multiplying spikes.
Brooks ran with the power of your memories,
And the fruit of the trees had your gravity
Because you had stolen
And killed.
The day of understanding, not judgement day --,
If your eyes were open
From the blue,
Or your mouth slit open with blood now,
Not even the weeds in the ground would forgive you
Nor the sleep of snakes seize your dreams.
You are angular
And raw.
Now there is neither you nor he nor the other.
Savage green drove out the home green.
Desolate again
Are earth and sky.
Desolate again,
Dead men go forgotten,
And a dog goes after the dead men.
As if you are severed now,
You, beyond darkness and absence,
You rise from the earth to the sky ...
Stretching long,
Tilting long,
Narrow long,
He goes,
Goes,
He goes on a beam of light.
Scarecrow Scared
You scare
The tiny birds away
In the orchards from sunrise to sunset.
But at night when the huge skies
Swoop down on you,
I feel you are scared.
Worldwide
Here or in India or in Africa
All things resemble each other.
Here or in India or in Africa
We feel the same love for grains.
Before death we tremble together.
Whatever tongue he may speak,
His eyes will utter the meaning.
Whatever tongue he may speak,
I hear the same winds
That he is gleaning.
We humans have fallen apart.
Boundaries of land split our mirth.
We humans have fallen apart.
Yet birds are brothers in the sky,
And wolves on the earth.
Poems of the Mediterranean
You, sea-sky,
If you stop a moment in sleep,
Seaweeds grow against the night.
Dead men become restless
If you lean a moment on the dark,
You, sea-sky.
---------------------
I plunge into the horizon,
For what I live
Is what I can recall.
Between Rome and Carthage
Floats, love by love,
Istanbul.
A bird splits my thoughts
From the blue.
My drink remains unfinished.
---------------------
You say
Stars
Will touch our hands
In an endless growth.
You say
Darkness
Is bright for lovers
Because it keeps quiet.
You say
I can't go to sleep.
We are alone,
And the night is blue.
---------------------
The globe was calm
With only the Mediterranean on it.
On the Mediterranean,
Just the two of us.
I said, "Do you love me?"
She closed her eyes to the horizons.
"Just the moment to ask," she smiled,
"Just the place to ask."
---------------------
A mass of green, a mass of gray
Over the winds,
They collide, and both crash into the horizon.
A rim of the stars on the crest of the waves --
Each foam is a tempest,
Each tempest, a world.
The sea and the sky may be concealed.
My love for you
Cannot be hidden.
---------------------
It's like air and flame and tree
But most of all like water,
This love of ours.
Purple has anguish but no end.
It blends into our life
By itself.
They say man turns to dust at death.
No, not us...
Clearly we shall turn to water.
---------------------
The Mediterranean grows dark on the horizons,
But
I am
Blue all over.
The Mediterranean is bygone and far as you go,
But
I am
The owner of the stars.
The Mediterranean cannot create you anew,
But
I
Can love you again.
---------------------
A frantic clamor erupts,
And silence is suddenly shattered.
The Mediterranean deepens in thought.
Airplanes cruise the sky.
Their white traces cling to the blue.
The Mediterranean understands and loves.
---------------------
It is the sea.
Each evening
In all thoughts
It comes and goes.
Seven to none --
Its agony,
Its duration,
Its echo.
This deep blue thing is midnight,
The silence
You forgot
Far away.
---------------------
You had heard
This song
In the old days too.
The song evokes in the wind
From green
The quiet weeds on the bottom of galleons.
In the Mediterranean's waves and in this song
You are alive, sparkling,
And somehow you don't exist.
---------------------
Think hard; this is all of our living.
First Crime
The mountain stabs
At dawn
The beauty
Of the night.
Teeming Street
Why do you wake up
At night and shudder?
Death can destroy what you might live,
Not what you have lived.
Song of Algeria
O Allah
O Allah I say,
And I shudder
At my own black voice.
O Allah.
Water,
Your lustre gushes out of my distant memories,
And the waves of famous buccaneers splash in my heart.
The scimitars of the mighty sultans flash on my face.
Do you hear, water?
Desert, this is Algeria,
The ancestral cargo of the camels down the ages,
Love,
Wisdom,
All that I am, bells.
The stars in the triads of those who shall be evil
Ravaged the three dimensions.
In their ill-fated lives the stars created seven bearings,
But here I doze off,
O Milky Way, when I should be weeping.
Dates, your flavour is gone.
No matter how you hide your solitude
Or make your dark green grow,
Our beauty is gone.
Dates, I taste bitter from top to toe.
Do you hear how the trampled sands are screaming?
Rise, mother,
March, woman,
Run, my son,
So a fateful cause may be set free.
Now they are hideous as the skeletons of wolves,
My dead ones, shot in the forehead.
Fallen into the Mediterranean.
They have no freedom left.
O night, take my dead ones.
Let go of me, earth, let me go.
Avenge those who have arrived.
Through the tiny and old and tattered banners,
O heaven,
Take me.
Ant from Sivas
The mighty Red River surged
Swirling in foam.
At the bottom of a telegraph pole,
Unhurried and foamless as the ages,
Marched
An ant from Sivas.
Glistening from the opposite bank,
Horses
Neighed all day.
Leaving behind the song of the horses,
It marched
Ignorant of the distances they trot.
Its voice, the sound of its steps,
Could be heard cheerful and happy
And heroic.
Blessed as the feet of craving,
It marched
On the face of the earth.
Its easy pace proved
It knew
The flavour of hills, brooks and weeds.
Breaking from the other ants
It marched
Towards the other ants.
In toil and untiring effort,
It resembled
The ones in Africa, China and Paris.
Black on the black soil's forehead,
It marched
Freer than destiny.
It knew nothing of ideas or issues.
Its dream
Walked not at all.
On a grain of wheat
It marched,
The ant from Sivas.
|
Telling it Right
Two men dupe each other --
A village rises there.
Nations lie to each other --
States fill our world.
Beating
How about it, let's join our hands.
You hit twice, and I'll belt two.
Has he stolen
Or sucked the nation's blood and sweat?
You belt four, and I'll strike four more.
20 sent abroad to buy ships, 30 to select tea ...
Did the Foreign Minister get a cut,
While our hairless children starve in mudbaked villages,
And our baby dolls sell their pure flesh night after night?
You hit seven times, and I'll belt seven more.
How about it eh, let's join hands.
Has he sold a plate of beans, 8 cents worth for two dollar eight,
Or did he shake his camel's head at your petition to squeeze 500 out of you?
Elected to Congress did he invest in his own future, trample on progress?
You belt nine, and I'll belt nine more.
Desolate
Let no one stare.
Under the sun and musing, I shall die,
Doffing my garments and memories
In a silence of the sky.
My calm and downcast hands
Will lay aside what fate requires.
Chanting ancient songs,
On the mountains I shall build fires.
Let no one look for love or eternity.
I shall go through graveyards strange and stark.
Bathing in fragrant waters,
I shall bask in pleasures in the dark.
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