It has been a long while since I last posted a poetry translation. So, here comes a new one! 🙂

He gives his money if he has some

If not, he just leaves not saying a word

Then he has a pocket watch; he looks at it every now and then

But I know he has nothing to do with watches

Ruhi Bey has nothing to do with time anyway

He always wears the same clothes

He takes off his jacket in the summer

His tie is thin as string

I have never looked at his feet

His face is so interesting I don’t know if he has feet.

Edip Cansever, from “Ben Ruhi Bey Nasılım?”, translated by Rukiye Uçar

If only your memory
of me were this blue May
sky, completely filled with
the pure stars of my acts!

If my acts were identical, like them: all pure,
clear, good, tranquil, just like the stars!

Below, I see your smile in dreams
–dreams of your memories of my life!–

translated by Dennis Maloney & Clark Zlotchew

Sorrow, it is not true that I know you;
you are the nostalgia for a good life,
and the aloneness of the soul in shadow,
the sailing ship without wreck and without guide.

Like an abandoned dog who cannot find
a smell or a track and roams
along the roads, with no road, like
the child who in a night of the fair

gets lost among the crowd,
and the air is dusty, and the candles
fluttering–astounded, his heart
weighed down by music and the pain;

that’s how I am, drunk, sad by nature,
a mad and lunar guitarist, a poet,
and an ordinary man lost in dreams,
searching constantly for God among the mists.

translated by Robert Bly