In order to find their voices,
Birds race through the garden.
I have seen so many places,
I ache inside to forget them.

translated by Sidney Wade & Efe Murad

**Karacaoğlan was a 17th Century Anatolian folk poet.

Don’t look for those trees anymore
Like red mulberries in the summer noon
The memory of light and shadow
Spilling onto a table glows and burns out

Don’t look for those trees anymore
No one’s under them anymore
Only on the while cloth, light and shadow
At once we burn and burn out.

translated by Sidney Wade & Efe Murad

II

Not always but especially
When I realize
You don’t love me
I want to see you
As I saw other people
From my mother’s lap
When I was young.

trranslated b y George Messo

Don’t think it’s the sun that bothers me;
So what if spring’s here?
Or if the almond tree’s in bloom?
We’re not about to die.
Even if we are, should I be afraid
Of death that comes with the sun?
I’m one year younger every April,
Every spring I’m a little more in love.
Am I afraid?
Friend, my trouble’s different.

translated by George Messo

Roof eaves pillar
Evening and trees all around
Two cats on the wall
Opposite each other
Two totems
Two passionate cats.

translated by Ruth Christie & Richard McKane

Sad-eyed cows of the plain
Lost in dreams
Don’t even turn and look at you.

translated by Ruth Christie & Richard McKane

When the tortoise turns on its back
Its death pursues it
All through the yellow evenings.

translated by Ruth Christie & Richard McKane

I woke and saw one morning
The sun had struck my heart,
I was like the birds and leaves
Fluttering in a spring wind.
I was like the birds and leaves,
My whole body’s in revolt,
I was like the birds and leaves,
Birds
And leaves.

translated by George Messo