we learned not to eat pizza
in restaurants run by Vietnamese
and buying by the slice
was the best
at that one place with the hot young guys
they called you lovely lady
and you were, are
charming them all
even me, still
as you separated the ham
from the carbonara sauce
and slid your plate over
and like me
relished spaghetti with black ink sauce
I drank white wine for you
old friend
and I hope you appreciate the sacrifice
but it was worth it
to have your company
once again

Sunday today.
Today they took me out in the sun for the first time.
And I just stood there, struck the first time in my life
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .by how far away the sky is,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .how blue
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .and how wide.
Then I respectfully sat down on the earth.
I leaned back against the wall.
For a moment no trap to fall into,
no struggle, no freedom, no wife.
Only earth, sun, and me. . .
I am happy.

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

4

I painted you on canvas only once
but picture you a thousand times a day.
Amazingly, your image there will last:
canvas has a longer life than I. . .

5

I can’t kiss or make love to your image,
but there in my city you’re flesh and blood,
and your red mouth, the honey I’m denied, your big eyes, really are,
and your surrender like rebel waters, your whiteness I can’t even touch. . .

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

Tonight my hand
. . . . . . .can’t read or write.
It’s neither loving nor unloving. . .
It’s the tongue of a leopard at a spring,
. . . . . . . . . .a grape leaf,
. . . . . . . . . . . .a wolf’s paw.
To move, breathe, eat, drink.
My hand is like a seed
. . . . . . . . .splitting open underground.
Neither a song of the heart nor “common sense,”
neither loving nor unloving,
my hand on my wife’s flesh
. . . . . . . . .is the hand of the first man.
Like a root that finds water underground,
it says to me:
“To eat, drink, cold, hot, struggle, smell, color–
not to live in order to die
but to die to live. . .”

And now
as red female hair…

Is the sadness I feel
these sunny winter day
the longing to be somewhere else–
on the bridge in my Istanbul, say,
or with the workers in Adana
or in the Greek mountains  or in China,
or beside her who no longer loves me?

Or is it a trick
of my liver,
has a dream put me in this state,
or is it loneliness again
or the fact
I’m pushing fifty?

The second chapter
of my sadness
will tiptoe out
and go the way it came–
if I can just finish this poem
or sleep a little better,
if I just get a letter
or some good news on the radio. . .

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

I didn’t know I loved clouds
whether I’m under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois
strikes me
I like it

I didn’t know I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my
heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop
and takes off for uncharted countries I didn’t know I loved
rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I’m half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks fly from the engine
I…

Suddenly something snaps in me and catches in my throat,
suddenly, in the middle of work, I jump up,
suddenly, in a hotel, in the hall, standing up, I fall into a dream,
suddenly, on the sidewalk, a branch whacks me in the forehead,
suddenly a wolf howls at the moon, miserable, enraged, starved,
suddenly stars hang from a swing in a garden,
suddenly I see myself in the grave,
suddenly my head is a sunny haze,
suddenly I cling to the day I started out as if it wouldn’t end,
and every time you float up to the surface. . .

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

Because of you, each day is a melon slice
smelling sweetly of earth.
Because of you, all fruits reach out to me
as if I were the sun.
Thanks to you, I live on the honey of hope.
You are the reason my heart beats.
Because of you, even my loneliest nights
smile like an Anatolian kilim on your wall.
Should my journey end before I reach my city,
I’ve rested in a rose garden thanks to you.
Because of you I don’t let death enter,
clothed in the softest garments
and knocking on my door with songs
calling me to the greatest peace.

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk