Translation: W. B. Bayril (Turkish Poetry)

Turkish Poetry by: W. B. Bayril
Translation: Hilal Karahan, Mel Kenne-Saliha Paker and Yaprak Damla Yıldırım

W. B. Bayril

The Lands That Allah Has Forsaken

Poet: W.B. Bayrıl

Translated by: Hilal Karahan

Children are eternity,

at those lands that Allah has forsaken.

We are star dust. That’s what we are.

In deep loneliness of universe.

Everything shut up.

Like consonants letters of immigration.

We have already left our souls at

desolate ruins that lightened by moon.

Noone is no longer a seashore for humanity here…

Because children are eternity

at those lands that Allah has forsaken. 

Lotus

Poet: W.B. Bayrıl

Translated by: Hilal Karahan

Scattered morning of perception… Glassy

borders… Imperfect beauty’s insistence

on the flesh…

In you I see the mistery. Oh blessed

plant!.. Soul blended with rose.

Existence relaxes… When garden

appears and Being is yet in leaves…

You were the shivering river of creation.

Life has secrets and mind has

oblivion beyond things. Hush!

Let not the ripped simplicity

of bewildering expand between us.

Much is concealed in the heart. And indeed it must!

And sometimes whatever you do,

a lily’s susceptibility is evident to its skin.

Man is deficient in any point of view.

Man, the cursed adventure,

apprentice to the estate of endurance.

Oh blessed plant!.. Soul blended with rose.

That may lead us to look for the incompleteness

in God. 

Babel

Poet: W.B. Bayrıl

Translated by Mel Kenne- Saliha Paker

Enough! Lower from above my heart

this sky-roof!

Come now! As love comes to fire.

Let each skirt to swirl one in the other.

Wondrously spun wrappings

of nothingness let

me wear!

Time, your spider, time! Detach

yourself from my flesh!

As before, melodies rise from the gardens

as omninous tower and serpent’s

slither. As words, by

and by, blurred

rose!

Oh, patience! Oh, sweet forebearance!

My horse has shed its hair. See the golden plumes.

Rub them together. Raise the curtain.

Crack wide open

the seal!

Last night, two angels descended

silently onto Babylon. Be quiet, my soul, and attend.

The refrain starts anew!

Oh, patience! Oh, sweet forebearance!

  

“Boats on the River”

Poet: W. B. Bayrıl

Translator: Yaprak Damla Yıldırım

The cottage that oozes the moon: Imagination! Figure

s are climbing, like poison ivies,

up on the letter statues sleeping in my heart

Water, tired of its existence. Rebellious

substance. It pushes unwillingly, with flowers

on the fancy river.

Two bodies returned to their innocence.

The last symbol of love. Side by side, hand in hand again.

To flow. Blind verb. It submits with resignation

To the power that condemned it to the flow.

Shadows floating in laurels. They mixed

with the river at the end… Oh mother river, the amber

hair of yours you lay across my heart! What language

can suffice now to call them dead?

It flashed. In an instant. On the paper. On this vitreous,

on this fragile ground. The remnants

I try to reconstruct of that hazy

halo… There remains the light scratches alone

in my helpless imagination inflicted by the moon.

Past: intricate account! What got lost,

what accumulates? In the golden seasons

I spent in-between two radiant magnets!

The Child and Lavender

Poet: W. B. Bayrıl

Translator: Yaprak Damla Yıldırım

Cyanide with its crystal touches

glides into my darkness. In the yard of wind, grows

passion; that black rose! Suddenly on the papers

the winter army with its serge calpac. Snow and suffocation.

The fear of being one’s own self begins.

C o v e r e d  b e c o m e   d r e a m  a n d  m i r r o r.

Inside, where the rust turns into shadow, shadow into child,

there is an eroded smell of lavender…

And a room to pass through in silence:

unease!... This is the way mother and remembrance is.

Cracks the clock that grinds basils. The memory creases.

Silver oozes from the mirror of the large mansion.

To return, oh impossible… When Thessaloniki comes

to sight from the roads of the one with pale silks.

Nights are fragile. Hits the glass the mad

linden. Silences in the blonde sleeps of the child

the drum whose immigrant lilacs withered.

It’s cognition, it’s the images with their foils gone, it gets old

In the feeling of smile and rose that floats from a grandmother.

C l e a r  b e c o m e  d r e a m  a n d  m i r r o r.

Dignus Ornatus

Poet: W. B. Bayrıl

Translator: Yaprak Damla Yıldırım

                                              for Bonnefoy.

ornament soothes.

bird is presence

sculpted bird

invention

existence drawn on stone

cloud dispersion

sensuous

fading away like a music

vanishing off in the cloud

what an opening in hearts

to the influence of the mist

under the heavens

of ash and iron

the ceremony of the dark

the sleeping thought

between the thought and the sun

in the noon of absence

under the dead heavens

to the wind of shadeless flame

do not give way

even though the “green darks of

moist spring” summon

Shore

Poet: W. B. Bayrıl

Translator: Yaprak Damla Yıldırım

                                   In memory of Canan Özdemir…

With your slight touch, the solder of reverie

would come apart. You, floating into

the evening hours, magnolia. The sense of

absence.

From the roots to the branches, the world recedes.

Look, in my clothes there’s only

my soul… fire and gold

dribble from the gutters of heavens

to childhood now.

The crazy other! Nobody is nobody’s shore

around here any more!

Summer thinned. Summer in which words

are fickle angels. In the beach

appeared the princess of foams

never again.

Oh little sister, oh magnolia the hapless.

What are we if not our melancholy

among these people who constantly

shed skins?

My dear… my dear… my dear… farewell!

The Mariners

Poet: W. B. Bayrıl

Translator: Yaprak Damla Yıldırım

The thin ship that carries dreams

to the port in the evenings, has long been out of sight.

We are the mariners, we know, like corals,

how to wait

without complaint.

Then a broken fin appears on

the water. Traces of closed gaff upon

its skin. Our lanterns lighten,

for a moment, that wrathful skeleton

entangled in ropes.

Capitain AhaB! Capitain AhaB!

Mussel cut our tongues… We were reading history

in deep waters. The knowledge of defeated gyre!

                              Then an elegant strike of tail

breaks this magic. Disappears the melting halo

our laurel-scented ritual. You the chemistry that lessens

in our souls! You the implacable

sense of absence!

Skinless and naked and proud and kufic.

We just stand. Like the screams in the bottles

left to the ink…

Still we are the mariners, we know the angel

will return, we wait. Vigilantly, endlessly.

-To resist the world, how else does a heart become able?

Translator Dr. Hilal Karahan: Turkish poetess, writer, translator, mother and medical doctor (1977, Gaziantep/Turkey). She is professionally writing since 2000. She has joined to many collective books, bilingual poetry almanacs and found in organisation comittee of international poetry festivals. She has 6 poem, 3 prose books and many selected poem books published in different languages. She is recently a member of Turkey PEN, Turkish ambassodor of World Institute of Peace (WIP) and Turkey director of  Writers Capital Foundation (WCP) and World Festival of Poetry (WFP) network sites. She organises Feminİstanbul Poetry Festival every year. She has many national and international poetry awards. Since 2017, she is a member of publishing council of international bilingual poetry magazines of  Absent and Rosetta Word Literatura.Communication: hilalkarahan108@gmail.com, www.hilalkarahan.com Translator Yaprak Damla Yıldırım: Turkish poetess, translator. Born in 1994. She was graduated from Boğaziçi University Management and Western Languages and Literatures departments in 2017. In March 2015, she was appointed as “The Young Poet” by Yasakmeyve. Her poetry collection “ezmira” was rewarded the degree of “Remarkable” by Yaşar Nabi Nayır Poetry Youth Awards 2016, short after which her poem “zan” ranked first in the Bayraklı “Peace” Poetry Award, as well. She translated The Atlas of Sorrow (Emel Koşar) into English. Her poems, essays and interviews have been published in various platforms like Evrensel Kültür, Yasakmeyve, Varlık, Yeni E, Lemur, Birgün Kitap, and Pan. Communication: yaprakdamlayildirim@gmail.com

Setu, September 2017