TRANSLATED FROM THE PORTUGUESE BY BAZ MARTIN GIBBONS

REFLECTION No. 1

No one dreams twice the same dream
Nor bathes twice in the same river
Nor loves the same woman twice.
God, the origin of all things,
is circulation and infinite movement.

We’re still unaccustomed to the world
Coming to be is a long grind.

THE MARCH OF HISTORY

I found myself on horizon’s edge
where clouds speak,
where dreams have hands and feet
and mermaids seduce the sea.

I found myself where the real is fable,
where moonlight dazzles the sun,
where music is our daily bread
and a child seeks solace from a flower,

where man and woman are one,
where swords and grenades
turn into ploughshares,
where a verb and its actions meld.

HALF BIRD

The woman at the end of the world
gives food to roses,
gives drink to statues,
gives dreams to poets.

The woman at the end of the world
summons light with a whistle,
she turns the virgin to stone,
she tames the tempest,
she diverts the course of dreams,
she writes letters to the river,
luring me from eternal sleep
into her singing arms.

LOVE—LIFE

I lived among men
who neither saw nor heard
nor consoled me.
I was the poet giving gifts
but got nothing in return.
Engulfed in the tempest of love,
I loved long before being born.
Love, a word that creates and consumes beings.
Fire, hellfire: it’s better than heaven.

NATURE

Contemplate these cleansed mountains
and the light tripping down in an oblique dance.
Everything comes from a vastly ancient world
where we’ll discover scattered scraps of photographs
clippings of visible thought
and a love unwilling to collaborate with death
— a boundless bird pecks at these cleansed mountains.

Also, read The 8.10 Ferry and Other Poems by Cemal Süreya, translated from The Turkish by Neil P. Doherty and published in The Antonym: 

The 8.10 Ferry and Other Poems— Cemal Süreya

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