A monk coveted the moon in the well
and fished it up with water into a jar.
But back at the temple, he will find
when the jar tilts, the moon spills.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
poetry
To the Moon by Song Ik-pil
When on the wane, you are always impatient to wax,
but how do you so easily wane after waxing?
You are full only once in a month’s thirty nights:
man’s mind in a lifetime is exactly the same.
translated by Kim Jong-gil
River by Güngör Tekçe
A meadow
And a river
There was someone
I forget
Through the
River straight towards me
Surging steadily onward
My feet planted on the earth
I was soon overwhelmed
Was it a thousand years ago
Or was it only yesterday
So many dead
Who’d grasped at deadwood and at dregs
Was it a Monday or was it a Wednesday
Whirled and swirled into the depths
So many loves
So many oaths
Washed clean and clear
Was it ten o’clock or was it twelve
With shriek upon shriek the waterfowl
Had bound the drawstrings of the night
They were basking in the sun
A summer with mascara smeared
Releasing a breath through a reed on the shore
Who was it stepping through the passing waters
Ws it I
Was there someone else
I forget
translated by Jean Carpenter Efe
Abz by Leyla Şahin
I come through the rains
my name, that of an old sea
before the earth was born
I swayed in the depths for thousands of years
I come through the winds
my name that of an old storm
slowly opening the velvet curtains
I escape to the meadows, in my eyes
a child’s mind
I come through the mountains
one half of my face in the mist
the other wandering in the woods
as joyful as a bird ready to migrate
I bring the spring with me
I come through the paths
path: the first ABC of my life
A: alienation, B: being together
M: meeting, Z: beyond all boundaries
I grasp an island of loneliness and come
love: the oldest scar on my face,
I come with my wounds.
translated by Ahu Dereli & Jean Carpenter Efe
Before the Mountain Beyond the Mountain by Ferit Edgü
My belief amounts to nothing–theirs to quite something
Down the mountain come the deer–I look at the deer
They at the mountain
I believe in scarcely a single thing, if anything in mankind
They trust in nearly everything, but never humankind
They look at the mountain–while I look beyond it
The deer go down the mountainside
Beyond the mountain
translated by Jean Carpenter Efe
North Star by Ferit Edgü
O sea–Please leave me in peace o sea
Summon me no more; without a sail
A poor boat am I, left alone, there’s now just me
Forgotten here on the sands
O sea–Share your secret with me
O north star, northwest wind, the storms
I who am a weary Kirghiz
Caught in the saddle of my horse
The whole winter long
O sea–Wreck me upon a rocky shore of yours, remote
Bury me in the waters so that this silent
Life of sailing finds an end
Because separated from you
I have naught but my name–No, say no more, shh
Let it be, let no one ever remember my name
translated by Jean Carpenter Efe
Nights by Şule Özmen
My love for the nights
Is so special
Because
I can see your eyes in the nights
In the nights
As enchanted as your eyes are
And your eyes are as black
AS THE NIGHTS ARE
translated by İlknur Gür & Jean Carpenter Efe
A Dream Far Away by Güven Turan
On the plains behind the cliff
An unsheltering wind
Uproots the shrubs
Gives way to cane beds
Even in mid summer
Seagulls
Flee southward to hunt
Without planting a tree
I can leave my body and go
Near one of the traps I’ve set
On the third day the moss hides
Within forty days the ice petrifies
To become so atttached to a dream
To expand the saddening wastes of the city
Even when her picture has decayed on the table
Before a new thunderstorm arises
One should pull the boat ashore
translated by Suat Karantay
Night by Yahya Kemal Beyatlı
Kandilli floated upon sleep–
We trailed the moonlight on the deep
We took a shining silver track
And spoke no word of turning back
Phantom trees on the dreaming crest
Pensive slopes where waters rest
The season’s end was such a time
The distant note of a hidden chime
We passed and vanished far away
Ere the dream was lost at break of day
translated by Bernard Lewis
Spending the Night at Yunmen Temple Pavilion by Sun T’i
At Incense Pavilion below East Peak
the flowers in the mist were from another world
I held up a lantern on a deep mountain night
and pulled back the curtain on a lakeland fall
the swans stayed behind on the walls
the Dipper and the Ox spent the night in the window
the road to Heaven seemed so close again
I dreamed I was traveling with clouds
translated by Red Pine
Leonard Durso 