Loving you is like eating bread dipped in salt,
like waking feverish at night
and putting my mouth to the water faucet,
like opening a heavy labeled parcel
eagerly, happily, cautiously.
Loving you is like flying over the sea
for the first time, like feeling dusk settle
softly over Istanbul.
Loving you is like saying “I’m alive.”

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

Is the sadness I feel
these sunny winter day
the longing to be somewhere else–
on the bridge in my Istanbul, say,
or with the workers in Adana
or in the Greek mountains  or in China,
or beside her who no longer loves me?

Or is it a trick
of my liver,
has a dream put me in this state,
or is it loneliness again
or the fact
I’m pushing fifty?

The second chapter
of my sadness
will tiptoe out
and go the way it came–
if I can just finish this poem
or sleep a little better,
if I just get a letter
or some good news on the radio. . .

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk