Translated from the Turkish by Neil P. Doherty

Guest

I was bored yesterday till evening,
Two packets of cigarettes made no difference,
Tried to write, couldn’t;
Played the fiddle for the first time
In my life, went for a walk,
Watched some people playing backgammon,
Sang a song off key,
Caught flies, a whole match box full,
In the end, God damn it,
I upped and came here.

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Sabri the Mechanic

Me and Sabri the Mechanic
Always meet in the evening,
And always in the street;
And always drunk, we chat.
Each time he says:
“I’m late home.”
And under his oxter,
Two loaves of bread

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Epitaph 1

He suffered from nothing in this world
As much as he did from corns;
Even the fact he was born ugly
Didn’t bother him that much.
When his shoes didn’t pinch,
He never took God’s name in vain.
He wasn’t much of a sinner either.
Tis a pity, what happened to Süleyman Effendi.

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Epitaph 2

The whole` `To be or not to be”
Business never concerned overly,
He went to bed one night.
And just never woke up.
They came and took him away.
He was washed, prayed for, and buried.
When his creditors hear he’s dead
They will surely cancel his debts,
As for money owed to him…
Nobody owed the deceased a thing.

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Epitaph 3

They put his gun back in the depot
And gave his uniform to another man.
No bread crumbs in his bag now
No lip traces on his flask.
The wind was such that
It blew him away,
And not even his name was left behind.
Just this couplet scrawled in his hand
On the canteen wall:
“Death is the will of God,
Ah, but if only there were no parting”.

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To Keep Myself Busy

All the beautiful women thought
Every love poem I wrote
Was written for them,
And I always felt terrible
Knowing that I wrote them
Just to keep myself busy.

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