Ataol Behramoglu
Translated from Turkish by Walter G. Andrews
Gazel to Death
Perhaps I’ve always thought secretly about death
In everything and before all else I thought of it
As though it were the identical twin within me
When I thought of myself, I thought of it
If now and again I appeared to have forgotten,
When I longed for forgotten things, I thought of it
When a girl in a thousand year-old picture
Smiled sadly at me, I thought of it
In a dream where I encountered my unhappy childhood
As I ran my hands through her hair, I thought of it
I knew it was eyeing me from everywhere
I knew this and also thought of it
Although everyone is dying his own death
When someone died it was my death I thought of
My sense of life is so powerful that
Death was just a concept, I only thought of it
How awful when poetry ages as one reads it
Three points: And there was a city behind the blue curtains
Which Saturday, this the how-manyth package, men would come
from the bazaars
I was going to think up a street with sailboats, little brides in
white caps
One of the men would drop his cigarette into the water
Gulls into the water, women proudly into the bazaars
I was going to write a poem, I was stifling, fed up with old things
It was Camus, nope, don’t know who it was, I’m cracking up
Everything will begin when it disentangles itself from your hair
Is the truth of table-cloths to be spread? How awful always to take ref-
uge in known words
A person should let himself go. —But what kind of color is this—
The coming of evenings from somewhere along with inspirations
as though
thinking of poetry
Quinces sweet and soft . . .
Later when the ache in my belly grew I would be frightened
At that tubercular child’s how-manyth deception they will come
Everything spills into a colorless void
Writing poems is perhaps the loveliest deception
Later they’ll make a picture or something, then go and drink wine
I’d make me into a brand new sailor if I were God
Maybe there were new things over there
It comes from within me to write as though rabid, I’m hungry,
do you understand
Let the doctors call it what they will
Who can know anything best of all
What does it mean to know anything best
Which religion doesn’t grow old
My hands and my wrists and my eyes are tingling with desire
It is not at all time for me to see your tired countenances
Within me is a dynamite of pressure and I’ll die if it doesn’t explode
I want to write poetry, I’m bored, I’m disgusted by my habits
If I stop thinking and let loose my hands perhaps I will have much
to say
I’m running to the attic like a solitary bug
Before you become old and ugly, I must kiss you on the nose