But as far as translation is concerned, naturally every writer loses in translation, particularly poets and humorists. Also writers whose writing is tightly connected to folklore are heavy losers. In my own case, I think I am a heavy loser. But then lately I have assisted in the translating of my works, and knowing the problem,I take care that I don’t lose too much. The problem is that it’s very hard to find a perfect equivalent for an idiom in another language. But then it’s also a fact that we all learned our literature through translation. Most people have studied the Bible only in translation, have read Homer in translation, and all the classics. Translation, although it does do damage to an author, it cannot kill him; if he’s really good, he will come out even in translation. And I have seen it in my own case. Also, translation helps…

I’m a native Southerner, but as a writer I think background matters most in how well it teaches you to look around and see clearly what’s there and in how deeply it nourishes your imagination.

they say that the die
is cast and I will follow
where it will lead me
new places faces abound
finally a path in sight

the well is deep
and I ponder it often
especially in early morning hours
a specialty of mine
there is a lesson to learn
and I could should learn it
so I am looking sideways
upside down
then backwards
a complicated process
this business of mine
just trying to figure out
all of it
before the ink runs dry

you’re there
in front of me
one dimensional, of course
but I remember more dimensions
the sound of your laugh
a kid’s laugh, really
but can we be held
accountable
for what we inherit
that smile
that always just happened
without planning
or thinking
a natural reaction
to life
around you
and your eyes
open, clear
looking at the world
from a distance
and yet full of mischief
whenever you laughed
the tilt of your head
the length of your neck
the way your left shoulder
dips to the side
there’s a sea behind you
on a coast
a faraway coast
a lifetime ago
your lifetime
and mine
in a world long gone
that I won’t be returning to
any time soon

Sometimes the fear of the unknown is not as great as the fear of things staying the way they are.

The books that made me want to be a writer were books like Hubert Selby’s Last Exit to Brooklyn, where I recognized people who were somewhat meaner and more desperate than the people I grew up with, but who were much closer to my experience than anything I’d ever read before. I mean, I didn’t have a red pony. I didn’t grow up in nineteenth-century London. With Last Exit to Brooklyn, I realized that my own life and world were valid grounds for literature, and that if I wrote about the things that I knew it was honorable–that old corny thing: I searched the world over for treasures, not realizing there were diamonds in my own backyard.

-Youth is such a thing-

I quiver deep inside with a voice every day,

Every time the clock chimes, repeatedly:

“What have you done of your field, where is the harvest?

Will you proceed into the night with nothing in your hands?

Just think! You are halfway through your life.

Youth is such a thing that comes and goes;

And after that you are left out on a limb;

You run from one window to another.”

Oh those days I could not know the value of,

The bunch of roses I threw away without smelling,

The fountain whose water I wasted,

The blowing wind I could not set sail against!

Yet, the waters tend to flow to the west,

The sound of the nightingale on the tree has changed

Shadows are settling on my window;

Your time is coming, oh memories.

(Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı, Gençlik Böyledir İşte, Varlık, July 1, 1937)

-Translated by Rukiye Uçar…

The season seems to be ending early
this morning felt sadder still
the wind stirs a heartbreaking spring
and the pond chills a flowerless night
the longer I look at the wine
the clearer you become
who is that walking along the winding river
looking for my footprints and thinking of me

translated by Red Pine

In an empty study with nothing to do
you loosened your hair strings and waited for a friend
it wasn’t a night for reading
but for writing poems about the moon
after listening to the bell and sleeping in comfort
we rolled up dew-covered blinds
and sensed another fall was near
while the fading river tried to hold off dawn

translated by Red Pine