lost youth

What Is Left by Hüseyin Yurttaş

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What is left
of the streets I thundered through like a raging wind
of my youthful steps whose echoes are imprinted on the walls
what is left

in the ravishing summers where docile shadows swayed
the light that flowed through me like a legend
which darkness is it now pursing in the cascade of the years

the lightning flashing distantly on my horizons
what does it now want to reveal of the beyond
which unanswerable questions in this endless inquiry
are reiterated unceasingly in the desolation of my life
in this blinding flood that may never end

yes, in truth, what is left
of my youthful steps whose echoes are imprinted on the walls

translated by Suat Karantay

Taking A Trail Up From Deva-king Monastery To The Guesthouse Where My Friend Wang Chung-hsin And I Wrote Our Names On A Wall Fifty Years Ago, I Find The Names Still There by Lu Yu

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Meandering these greens, azure all around, you plumb antiquity.
East of the wall, above the river, stands this ancient monastery,

its thatched halls we visited so long ago. You a mountain sage,
I here from Wei River northlands: we sipped wine, wrote poems.

Painted paddle still, I drift awhile free. Then soon, I’m nearing
home, azure walking-stick in hand, my recluse search ending.

Old friends dead and gone, their houses in ruins, I walk through
thick bamboo, deep cloud, each step a further step into confusion.

translated by David Hinton

My Youth Is All Gone by Orhan Veli Kanık

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Where was this melancholy in those days?
This crying inside,
Singing of faraway things?
I raised hell
Every day then;
To a dance today, to the movies tomorrow,
If I didn’t like it, to a cafe;
If I didn’t like that either, to the park;
I embellished my lover
In poems,
I took her to picnics,
A book of poems on our laps;
Where, where,
Where was this melancholy in those days?

translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat