OGUZ TANSEL

KNOT
You sang a song chilling my spine-
Care dripped into my heart like venom
When the moment of farewell
Tapped on the door

Just to think of travel
Gives me the shivers:
Knots come apart all of a sudden,
Light flickers in our clasped hands-
Who remains behind dies.

With heaves and sighs
The loving heart swells like the sea.
We refuse to believe in the bitter truth.
With the voyager gone
The world comes to an end.
The train glides away on the rails-
The earth crumbles under our feet.

Clutching the wind’s hand and the ashen clouds,
I must take the road to the big city
-a watermill with all the water gone-
For a new life of faint memories.

Translated by Talat Sait Halman
Contemporary Turkish Literature, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,
Rutherford, USA 1982, s. 412


 
NO TO WAR
People shut within the walls of torment
Cannot think of freedom with empty stomachs.
Pigeons’ wings from their eyes,
Spread out their dreamy antennas;
They start being aware of themselves.
One day the roads become illuminated,
Suddenly the black walls come tumbling down;
Every living creature takes its place.
When the toiling hands desire,
When the hearts are filled with love
Peace becomes the writing in the sky.
The whole world should be at peace,
Friendly both at birth and at death.
The noble rule of our lives:
Peace, Love  Peace, Love  Peace…


Translated by Nilufer Mizanoglu-Reddy



OLEASTER TREE
I salute you every morning with all my heart!
Adorned in the spring you’re stark naked in winter.
I think of you as a mother or a sister;
You seem like a beloved that touches me deeply.
I say you’re light-hearted and I envy you.
I am not fond of your place in our garden,
Yet deep inside me I feel our lives are inseparable.
Your yellow flowers blossom early;
You must be the neighbor of the prisoners.
Your leaves are embellished with songs of longing,
Your branches converse with the stars,
Your roots are deeply buried in mysterious dreams.
Why don’t you talk with us?
With your lively and mighty presence,
You make me think of someone all the time.
Oleaster tree, do you have feelings of premonition?
Do you know how to live freely?

Translated by Nilufer Mizanoglu-Reddy


OUR FORGOTTEN RULE
We have become less hardy than the plants
Our lives are shorter than those of the trees
We are not as numerous as the birds
Yet if we hold hands we would be stronger
With all the fire in our hearts
To become like glowing embers
To love the mankind and the world with passion
To create once more and to find love again
Our forgotten rule
Here’s the earth – here’s humanity
Let’s talk about them

Translated by Nilufer Mizanoglu-Reddy


SONG OF THE PRISONER
How fearful it is to think of the flight
Of a bird to its heart’s content.
Is this the meaning in human life?
 
To be on a mountain top where no one  ever set foot, no voice ever echoed,
To descend like a god into a wish-stone,
To bang the mountains in me one against the other;
To step aside like a heartless god;
To be longed for but not gone after,
To be gone after but not found.
 
Translated by Aysıt Tansel


WORLD OF TALES
These are pigeons of tales
Pigeons that fly free in the sky
Pigeons that bathe as the clouds pass by
Some of them are daughters of kings  so gay
Love to a prince are some of them
Alike memory they flew away
 
I loose myself in a folk song
I live in a world of tales
I find you in a song to a folk song you belong

Translated by İlyas Halil

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