Translated from the Turkish by Neil P. Doherty

Inscription

If you must write again what has been written
translate it into another language and write
because words are like mercury
and do not settle easily in any place

We will never again find
the thousand stones the thousand holes
and the flying carpet of the thousand and one nights
now flies only over Baghdad

Here even the birds are reticent
and seem to yearn after fruit
they perch on the white wings of the boats
like angels perching on statues

I brought you this rose
I bought this silver comb for you
with this mason’s chisel
carve an inscription on marble
then roll it into the sea

Truths

I cannot say that the sea is blue
that the skies are bluer still
that the trees are all red
that there is a ship away in the distance
a ship on the roof
a ship on the wall

I cannot say
that like insects the boats smell
of roses and jasmine

I cannot say, I cannot say
that I carried a soul
that the sun was warm
and that my days in the garden
fell like leaves in spring

I listen to the birds of a distant season
and glimmer in the mind
I enter a city
only seen in dreams
with you there on the back of my horse

that I know tomorrow will come
I cannot say

Child and Dog

Going through the fallow grazing field:
if only there were a child, walking right in front of me
he said; with a dog behind, we’d find a path through the reeds
down to the sea. But seeing as there’s no child and no dog,
what use is going down to the sea?

On the Shore

Carnations at the foot of the whitewashed wall, the sky blue,
Weeds and thistles on the slope down to the sea,
And an uncaulked rowing boat, that’s been lying there for years.
Shall we look under the wooden jetty to where the sun spatters on the water
Shall we skim pebbles, three skips, four skips,
Whoever skims the most, can steal right back to childhood?
The overturned old days beneath us,
A hermit crab shell, its traveller has gone, leaving his old clothes behind,
Empty and whorled, it pricks the palm of my hand

Milking Hour

— Put the peaches out on the shelf, let the kitchen smell of peaches!
the man said, as he stepped down from the porch and went to milk the cow.
The woman saw the cow staring at the plain as she was being milked:
a galvanized bucket underneath, her teats in the man’s hands, sideways,
as the man, panting, coaxes out milk gathered up from clover and thyme,
black and white flecks in the brightness of the evening.
She went into the kitchen and put the peaches out on the shelf,
and now the flowerpot in the mirror, the embroidery on the cushion,
the light between the rafters, the purple of the rug,
now even the spiders smell of peaches,
the sky is peach-coloured, the clouds smell of peaches

Wild Rose

The holy well as simple as a wild rose
in the tiny garden where a goat grazes.
A tree on the roof and St. George inside,
on Mary’s knee, Jesus her only lamb.
Oh white doves flying in the shadowless sky,
reeds and grasses swaying softly in the wind,
and the unreachable loneliness of high Gods!
Your immortal days awash with sun and salt,
stir time into the smell of oregano.
The sea, the universe? It sings the song
of the pebble that comes and goes in the foam

Also, read “POEMS FROM ‘GARIP/STRANGE’— NEIL P. DOHERTY” published in The Antonym:

Poems from ‘Garip/Strange’— Neil P. Doherty

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