Month: February 2015

At The Dark Hour by Paul Dehn

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Our love was conceived in silence and must live silently.
This only our sorrow, and this until the end.
Listen, did we not lie all of one evening,
Your heart under my hand.

And no word spoken, no, not even the sighing
Of pain made comfortable, not the heart’s beat
Nor sound of urgency, but a fire dying
And the cold sheet?

The sailor goes home singing; the lamplit lovers
Make private movements in a public place.
Boys whistle under windows, and are answered;
But we must hold our peace.

Days, too, broke silently. Before the blackbird,
Before the trouble of traffic and the mist unrolled,
I shall remember at the dark hour turning to you
For comfort in the cold.

The Old Fisherman by Liu Tsung-yuan

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The old fisherman spends his night beneath the western cliffs.
At dawn, he boils Hsiang’s waters, burns bamboo of Ch’u.
When the mist’s burned off, and the sun’s come out, he’s gone.
The slap of the oars: the mountain waters green.
Turn and look, at heaven’s edge, he’s moving with the flow.
Above the cliffs, the aimless clouds go too.

translated by J.P. Seaton

Coda by James Tate

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Love is not worth so much;
I regret everything.
Now on our backs
in Fayetteville, Arkansas,
the stars are falling
into our cracked eyes.

With my good arm
I reach for the sky,
and let the air out of the moon.
It goes whizzing off
to shrivel and sink
in the ocean.

You cannot weep;
I cannot do anything
that once held an ounce
of meaning for us.
I cover you
with pine needles.

When morning comes,
I will build a cathedral
around our bodies.
And the crickets,
who sing with their knees,
will come there
in the night to be sad,
when they can sing no more.

Heartache by Cezmi Ersöz

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Here we are alone again me and this pain within
again just you and I
put your hand in mine
shh! whatever you do don’t make me whine.

Oh my heartache deep within
put your hand in mine
let’s you and I find a way
not breathless in panic or shouting today
out of this deep dark forest echoing with howls. . .

My pain within, my heartache deep inside, oh you my love
here we are alone again
put your hand in mine
shh! whatever you do don’t make me whine. . .

translated by Jean Carpenter Efe

Sand by Gülten Akın

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I had a beloved once
who sent me some sand from his hometown
I, however, always wondered about the wind of that kind
whether it was tamed crazy continuous
whether it appeared suddenly in the sky
hurling what it gathered from the ground

there were cities we later shared
the wind masterful I inexperienced
it swept by violently, came and went
filling my eyes with sand

translated by Suat Karantay

After the Rain by Cevat Çapan

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This time
I brought with me
the chill of the streets
in which we once walked.
Your breath and gaze will be filled with
shadows of the eaves falling upon us
and the smell of sweet basil outside the windows
if you hold my hand.
At this crossroads
where everything is lost
and found again
when we are face to face with all that crowd
you will realize
the further
time takes you away from me
the closer
it draws me to you.

translated by Zeynep Bağcı & Suat Karantay

Desert by Cevat Çapan

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Whenever
I sit at a table
to write something to you
I think of the tightrope performers
of my childhood and
all of a sudden
the pen in my hand
gets longer and longer
like that balance-stick
and I soon
unlike that masterful tightrope performer
more like an inexperienced clown
fall down into the void
and start jumping
in the bouncing net of dreams
Then
with the laughter
of my invisible spectators
I try to crawl
in a dry sea of tears

translated by Zeynep Bağcı & Suat Karantay