Author: zdunno03

The New Rule by Rumi

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It’s the old rule that drunks have to argue
and get into fights.
The lover is just as bad. He falls into a hole.
But down in the hole he finds something shining,
worth more than any amount of money or power.

Last night the moon came dropping its clothes in the street.
I took it as a sign to start singing,
falling up into the bowl of sky.
The bowl breaks. Everywhere is falling everywhere.
Nothing else to do.

Here’s the new rule: break the wineglass,
and fall toward the glassblower’s breath.

translated by Coleman Barks

on seeing Hair in Turkey

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no old hippies
in the audience
just some wannabes
on stage
kids too young to remember
there was a world
20 years ago
so what can one expect
of 50 years ago
and I sit
snarling at all the cellphones
that light up
throughout the seats
and wonder
just who they came to see
their facebook page
or twitter
or the people on stage
so into themselves
so 21st Century

from Rubaiyat by Nazim Hikmet

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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

from Things I Didn’t Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet

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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 didn’t know I loved sparks
I didn’t know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty
to find out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

Migration II by Orhan Veli Kanık

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Now
One can see trees
From his window.
And it rains during the day
Along the canal.
The moon comes up at night
And there is a Thursday market
In the square.
But he,
Perhaps it is exile, money,
Perhaps a letter,
He thinks of something else.

translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat

on sleeping dogs

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he said
I seemed tired
of what I’d been doing
this in way of understanding
my plans
no sense in embellishing
let sleeping dogs
sleep
content peaceful
reality is
after all
what one perceives
no point in explaining
when you’re halfway
out the gate