And this
is all there is–
when my love and I
counted on a thousand years
translated by Hiroaki Sato & Burton Watson
loss
The Station by Melih Cevdet Anday
An unknown evening hour
Of a station with an age-old platform, sadness
By my side, I knew no direction.
I had left you up there, in the sky
Dark were the trees and the road
Dark were your white clothes.
The night, that treasure, foreign stone
Your window was above the trees
No voice or iron can save me now.
Here I am in the hours
The hours are nowhere, no
Not in this direction, not in that.
I had left you up there, in the sky.
translated by Şehnaz Tahir-Gürçağlar
Valentine by Robert Creeley
Had you a dress
would cover you all
in beautiful echoes
of all the flowers I know,
could you come back again,
bones and all,
just to talk
in whatever sound,
like letters spelling words,
this one says, Mother,
I love you–
that one, my son.
Ordinary Autumn Evening by Dong-Jip Shin
On an ordinary autumn evening
Ordinary fruit is better.
Sometimes ordinary words
With no peculiar savor
Suit me better.
Hearing in memory
The last car depart,
I step over
The membrane of sleep,
And a fruit falls in my dream.
I will ask the wind
That departs in the morning
To what depths the fruit has fallen.
unknown translator
Valentine by Robert Creeley
Had you a dress
would cover you all
in beautiful echoes
of all the flowers I know,
could you come back again,
bones and all,
just to talk
in whatever sound,
like letters spelling words,
this one says, Mother,
I love you—
that one, my son.
a haiku: before you
awake and asleep
my mind goes back to a time
your face before me
from Conversations in Sicily by Elio Vittorini
Still smoking I went outside. Cra, cra, cra, shouted the ravens flying through the ashen sky. I went down into the street, went along the street of that Sicily which was no longer a journey, but motionless, and I smoked and cried.
“Ah! Ah! He’s crying! Why is he crying?” shouted the crows among themselves, following behind me.
I continued my walk without answering, and an old black woman followed behind me too. “Why are you crying?” she asked.
I didn’t respond, and I went on, smoking, crying; and a tough guy who was waiting on the piazza with his hands in his pockets asked me too: “Why are you crying?”
He too followed behind me, and still crying, I passed in front of a church. The priest saw us, me and those following me, and asked the old woman, the tough guy, the crows: “Why is this man crying?”
He joined us, and some street urchins saw us and exclaimed:
“Look! He’s smoking and crying!””
They also said: “He’s crying because of the smoke!” And they followed behind me with the others, bringing their game along too.
In the same way a barber followed behind me and a carpenter, a man in rags, a girl with her head wrapped in a scarf, a second man in rags. They saw me and they asked: “Why are you crying?” Or they asked those who were already following me: “Why is he crying?” And they all became my followers: a cart driver, a dog, men of Sicily, women of Sicily, and finally a Chinaman. “Why are you crying?” they asked.
But I had no response to give them. I wasn’t crying for any reason. Deep down I wasn’t even crying; I was remembering; and in the eyes of others, my remembering looked like crying.
translated by Alane Salierno Mason
Dream by Orhan Veli Kanik
My mother died
In a dream
Last night
And my waking up
Crying
Reminded me
Of my crying when
One holiday morning
My balloon slipped through my fingers
And I watched it
Rise
Into the sky.
translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat
Roads Too Early by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar
Roads disappeared early
I lost my hope of disappearing
Something else covered your foot steps
Beyond the silence colored moon
Far away from everything, and stars
You became the denier of all gardens
Built your house where my freezing winds
Can’t find a branch to break
a tanka in three lines by Ishikawa Takuboku
Sadness of the lifeless sand:
rustling,
it falls through my fingers as I clutch it
Leonard Durso 