(The plight of the poet in Turkey is compared to Prince Cem’s misfortunes.)

The day faded, red drops gleaming in its skirts.
I wandered night’s eroded garden
In a yellow rain, enclosed by endless rocks,
Memories shaking my heart, the copper smell of flight,
My childhood a throne room, my sultanate lost in Bursa.
All the gates closed, every gate a wall.
I turned, I saw that great mirror reflecting
The migrant rain where being and nothingness merge.

The day faded, red drops gleaming in its skirts.
There were no gates at my coming. Sunset, the quay
The sunken hulls off Rhodes.
Through my galley’s swollen beams I heard the wind’s whisper etched
Across the vast waters of my face.

High hills there, here steep and bitter ways,
A horse’s neigh, dark scent of rose,
Secret passages under temple ruins
And the chorus of petrified dead in musty cellars.
Who goes there? unwary traveller in this spring dawn
And virgins walking in white winding-sheets.

Suddenly lightning! gates appeared and vanished
Defeat and pain, flight and exile. With the copper smell
Of loneliness rising in time’s lost mirror,
This curse forged on my brow, this unknown journey,
I felt a thousand redhot irons sear my flesh
My body hanging from dark crenels ---
Myself a spring dawn’s sacrificial victim.
Suddenly rain! one half of my face washed away.
Lead seals me eyeless!  These are my bridal gifts
A bass wind moans in the desolate hollows
The desolate caves of my eyes --- whose turn now?
All my mates hanged from the drowned rigging of my sunken ship
Oh my Celal! dear Sinan!
Where does this sea flow?  We alone are left
Rain blots out all the gates.  

I, Cem, till yesterday ruled half an empire.
My image faded on the coins I minted
I died a thousand deaths, I watched my own corpse
Striking the shore.
I walked with greasy ropes about my neck (sunset, the quay,
The sunken hulls off Rhodes) and now
The world has no more place for me
No house or palace, neither throne nor rank.
Give me your hand, elder brother, let me near,
Take me in, have me strangled if you need,
Part of me totally dark, part suddenly rain!

Days were buried in a forest’s soundless scream, In the bottomless wells of its heart. Courage:
The darkness behind my eyes is a haunted land
--- I’ll never reach.

The day faded, red drops gleaming in its skirts,
A horse’s neigh, dark scent of rose
And no gates at my coming.
The gates erased,
I, stranded in lost time, was left outside.
In this cold, this darkness of desolation,
I am alone, my hands my only light.