Alice Melike Ülgezer 

Translator

Master, my hands were made for creating art
my tongue for cursing, my heart for sorrow.
Death was meant for me.
Master is this my only fate?

What of love Master
and separation?
Loneliness was meant for me.
Master is this my only fate?

What of homesickness Master
and what of return?
Longing was meant for me.
Master, is this my only fate?

The Poet says:
Who can compare what I give to words
with a Master who quenches
the thirst of steel
with water?

The Steel Master answers:
My dear Poet
steel is like words.
If you keep the fire burning at fever pitch,
it can melt both the spirit and the body

We escaped the sounds of a city that didn't embrace us,
fled the silent remains of a winter sea.
We knew we were being watched
and we watched ourselves
with one hope, that this time, it would be different, not like before

In silence, we forgave ourselves for hoping

As heart and time inhabit the same space
so, in equally measured intervals,
the Night Bird release its cry to earth

And the people of fallen villages
the ones who were forced to the road;
the children too,
forced to leave behind
their souls,
their birth place -
behind their eyes is an emptiness.
Their elders and women, dishonoured.
Their men, defeated by anger.

Those Those Those
whom we carried

With each shriek of the Night Bird,
we remember more keenly
the sentence of our fallen lives,
The state we've been reduced to.

The Night Bird shares our plight, our bitter resolve
It doesn't sleep, it can't sleep, it doesn’t stop -

Yet at one time, we had roses in our minds.
We looked at fruit trees and lilies,
we were seduced by beautiful scents
we had passion that grew roots, deep encounters.
We found what we were meant to find

The cries of the Night Bird
make us feel mad with courage.
And our fears dissolve into calm
as we wait for morning.

It was your mouth

nude wall
secret door.

It was your mouth

that left traces of unborn verses.

Wild herbs alone changed the elements
I saw - the leaves of your mouth,
tasted the bitterness, the hurt

It was your mouth,
like fallen walnut trees

that gathered all the voices and fled.

It was your mouth

my street waif
my absent sky.

It was your mouth

and we were still children in our love making

(between two games).

Within every refugee there grows a rose tree –
resilient, despite the heat and thirst.

Imagine entire nations, borderless;
this expansive resilience to prejudice

It is not the longing –
no, nor the sorrow.
There was no resistance to either longing or sorrow
when suddenly, without reason, they were cast aside.
Lawless, stateless yet innocent still.

Now the body of baroque dreams and birds
can be placed, [finally] with equal grace.
Vivaldi on one side,
Borges on the other.
Enduring despite the madness of the crowd
And the insidiousness loneliness –

Within every refugee there grows a rose tree