Ilhan Berk

I Woke, This Meant a Love in the World by İlhan Berk

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I woke, this meant a love in the world
–Your voice was like forsaking a rose.
I was black, like paper on all sorts of life
Each day my name was on those seas, could you see
For a millennium I was an M sound in Lower Egypt.

I struck at loves, didn’t anyone notice
For a millennium I unfurled you in my loneliness.
Whenever my name came up in your bright light
. . . . .This meant a love in the world.

In Egypt once upon a time solitude was lovely
It was a brave new sky one could cross with you
When I glanced, it grew like a lily in my memory
Now it’s a shadow that grows tall in my meadows
This is the way I woke which wasn’t really waking
. . . . .This meant a love in the world.

translated by Talat S. Halman

Jet-Black by İlhan Berk

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One should describe you starting from your mouth
Youngster, your mouth is silk from China, conflagrations, a jet-black amber

Your mouth, a spring of ice-cold water, a general strike
A foolish sea throwing itself from one place to another

Your mouth is that kid who sells dark blue-winged birds in the Grand Bazaar
It’s a periodical titled Cornfield

These small, unpretentious rivers of ours are what your mouth is
Coming downhill a narrow street every day into a little square

Your mouth is “Time in Bursa City,” shyly roofed flea markets
Night as written in old Arabic

Kids, birds, summer times are all your that mouth is
Your mouth is a silken touch in my mind

translted by Önder Otçu

Women by ilhan Berk

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They stand there and chat near the breakwater,
Their voices force the birds to take flight, leaves to shed.
Women of who knows which eras.

There are times when the world comes to a standstill
Some day together we had pressed flowers to dry
In a scrapbook.

Women are something like that
Who knows when, where, suddenly,
It turns out we have lived a voice
they had left with us.