International Poetry Meeting Sarajevo 2006
A Bitter Loss
A Bitter Loss If I had not lost it I would not have found it
Wlmegen pir O*
If my mother hadnʼt died so young, I wouldnʼt have to call her back to life,
and I wouldnʼt even have noticed my father, if he hadnʼt gone away …
I was born to a house which was there only to be ransacked later,
and thus, under occupation, that accursed abode became our Holy Land.
He who never lost anything will give this a different interpretation,
believing he grasps it all, as if you could comprehend poetry
without hearing it read from the depths of the heart.
As the flapping wings of birds in their flight persist in your eyes,
so does a poem whenever you gaze at the bare branches of trees.
But perhaps I would never have crossed the bounds of my inner self,
if I hadnʼt been exiled from that primordial paradise of poetry.
I now realise that poets glean much goodness from evil deeds,
from being dumb, from watching their possessions being pillaged —
lost for good, for ever, only to be recovered a lot later, as a poem.
Πουραδα**
* He who never dies [alluding to Allah]
** Here he rests
PS: The orthography used in these epitaphs is called Karamanlidika (Gr) or
Karamanlıca (Tr), in which Greek characters were employed in writing
Turkish. This system went out of practice before the 30s following the
population exchanges between Turkey and Greece. The adoption of the
Roman alphabet in Turkey, no doubt played a part in this, but the practice
continued in Cyprus till 1933. (Translatorʼs note.)
A poet had to run to a frosty forest where he turned to a fox,
no one could recognise him in his feral fur but a poet
who has to run to a frosty forest where he turns to a fox,
no one can recognise him in his feral fur but a poet
whoʼll have to run to a frosty forest where heʼll turn to a fox…*
Fox Hunting
A fox came to the door in the night, and waited
and waited… Inside, we were all asleep.
He left his own scent instead of jasmine and went away.
I was dreaming of me, my mother and my granny:
weʼre queuing for food parcels in the Red Cross refugee camp.
In my motherʼs briefcase, a jewellery box,
royal entourage in the ornamental design,
the Queenʼs retinue wearing white gloves.
You can tell theyʼre out to hunt foxes,
and as they sound the horn the horses run,
and the greyhounds, they run so fast
that they leave no room for the fox in the picture…
As if my mother is looking at her mother in the box,
me, in my dream: ʽwhose eyes are these rubies?ʼ
The hunters are approaching!
Oh, God, may they never shoot the fox
with those guns, while the sun is setting,
the national liberators who looted even our bedroom,
may they never steal our enchanted box as well.
ʽDonʼt you know what a dodger the fox is?ʼ
said the voice of the guide, the fox is so selfish,
cunning and stealthy, can steal the milk from tea,
can hide in the eye of a needle, needle, needle…
My granny says, ʽchildren are afraid of blood;
if you shoot, weʼll look the other way.ʼ
I jump to the report of a gun, or fireworks,
Hunteeeers! Donnnnnnʼt!
There may be a poet inside the fox,
and a poem inside the poet, and me inside that poem.
* Originally written in English
The typewriter
I remember that he used to wear white boxers, and where
he used to scratch… And that is the only image I have retained of him.
His papers, scattered around the house, and indeed, his boxers.
Not quite a vacuum but a huge blank with stains:
he should have left something for me as a souvenir.
I chose this typewriter myself that day, 50s, A-keyboard,
keys hardly shift, some characters appear crooked.
But I imagined him young, typing his love poems,
his fingers trembling with emotion —
then I imagined he gave it to me as a gift, when I was older,
this typewriter, his very first treasure.
I put it in the place of honour, in my room,
the oil-lamp shining on it through a smart chimney.
And by recounting this story to everyone, time after time,
I began to believe that it was all true, what I had dreamed up!
In fact, to leave us behind heʼd sold the whole kit and boodle,
and like a fearful sparrow pecking on discarded fruit,
I pulled this typewriter out
from a pile of his litter at our doorstep,
and hurried back into the house lest I should be called a thief.
COCA-COLA COKE
Since becoming a poet I’ve had no time for a lover,
I’ve made love standing in bars…
I set off but stopped at the Greek-Turkish frontier
I tried to escape on the E5 motorway, my life crashed:
Waiting in the bus queue I was arrested
countless Kalashnikovs and banned pamphlets were confiscated,
I gave powers of attorney officially stamped.
I then invited History to a duel, but I’VE BEEN KILLED.
Survivors read me in the name of tomorrow
my yesterdays their todays, their lives a death…
Alarm clocks were set I went to work
I came from work and went to work and I came…
I stopped at green lights crossed at red
and my friends have opposed me since becoming a poet
mayhem everywhere.
An early election date was fixed
but my name was not on the roll
nor anywhere else in the world
I rode my rising-star and dismounted at Pisces
warnings were issued of radioactive waste
I continued to enter the sea stark naked.
Wherever I turned the tv on it was Always the Same,
Always the Same whenever I turned on the radio
and you carry on listening to the 7 o’clock news:
What a terrible world!..
In the evenings I walked looking over my shoulder
and for days I chased a sound, a butterfly’s flight…
Can poetry redeem the world?
I got off at the wrong stop, I’d lost my address book
forgot my identity-card, fed-up, frustrated
I fled
I ran and ran but later I returned
I couldn’t stay in that country nor in this
but whenever I encountered a Greek I fell sick with love
I tossed, like a boat in a 17th century painting
my head spun, I stopped…
(To be continued)
COCA-COLA COKE (Continued)
Here, ‘Here Is Evidence of Treachery!’ it depressed me.
Even Bach depressed me, now I am listening to the Blues.
I read Nietzsche to keep myself sane,
tired of complaining of loneliness, but I got to used to it
if I committed suicide, I said, but I got to used to it too.
I had a shot at love several times,
and the rest of the story you know…
I said, my love, I’ve been killed, my comrade, I said…
I’VE BEEN KILLED BUT THEY CAN’T EXORCISE MY GHOST
I wrote poems till morning threw most of them out,
wrote, again and again and then
nothing.
You’ve heard the news. Now a commercial:
A COKE! THAT IS THE REAL JOY IN LIFE!
THE SUITCASE
They broke into the house, the burglars
they wrenched open the solid lock of the leather suitcase…
we were hiding the mother-scent inside
to inhale furtively from time to time.
But they wrecked it —
motherʼs pleated skirt, her lilac-tinted scarf, her twin set,
her gloves, her hand mirror,
her butterfly-eyeglasses, her apron with frills,
the dress she herself made, violets all over it,
her tartan skirt and jacket, her slippers,
her little silk handkerchief
the folding tourist map of Lebanon,
her exercise books, her fountain pen,
and her letters from friends —
dirt and dust, dust and dirt …
Who cares what, which military quarters
the requisitioned House may be,
the calamity of war goes on and on,
once again there is a raid, again door locks are shattered,
and a life to be lived becomes looted.
And looted, too, becomes a life already dead.
They keep a List of the Missings
once again in our House we insured in vain…
The insurance can never cover the scattered
photographs kept in an album of gazelle hide.
Nor was it registered as a ʽvaluable itemʼ.
A GHOST
Phoenician inscribers of epitaphs were killed
by warriors who were Phoenicians themselves,
because they advocated an end to the war
with the Greeks, and those who remained,
continued to live like ghosts under threat of death.
– From a tombstone in Idalion, Cyprus, 8c BC
Only as a ghost can I now return to my own home,
emerging from blurred mirrors. I haven’t much time.
I throw the windows open, in pitch dark, starlight
floods the rooms. I shake the dust off the curtains,
off the linen draped over bookshelves. I must also clean
with moist breath the family pictures in frames.
The avenging angels of this polyglot house, now silenced,
make every one who enters it, promise to write
against wars, against everything jingoist, even tongues.
Sprinkle the antkiller around like enchanted words,
the mothballs. I’ve wiped the floors clean. I lock the doors,
and I’m off again, no one has even seen me.
I’m a phantom… they can’t have me killed.
WARTIME
I used to talk within myself so that no one could hear me,
and they all suspected wisdom in my silence!
Turkish was dangerous, must not be spoken,
and Greek was absolutely forbidden…
My elders who wanted to save me, were waiting,
each one trigger-ready before a machine-gun.
Anyway, everyone was then a willing soldier.
English remained right in the middle,
a slender paper-knife for cutting schoolbooks,
a tongue to be spoken at certain times
especially with the Greeks!
I was often unsure in which language to shed tears,
the life I lived wasn’t foreign, but one of translation –
my mother-tongue one thing, my motherland another,
and I, again, altogether different…
Even in those days of blackouts it became obvious
I could never be the poet of any country,
because I belonged to a minority. And ‘Freedom’s still
a little word uneasy in any nation’s lexicon…
Then in my poems, the three languages got into a wild tangle:
Neither the Turks nor the Greeks
could hear my inner voice, nor the Others…
But I don’t blame them, it was wartime.
THE CANDELANBRUM
To Poly
and in memory of my grandmother Haytice Hanım
Molohiya: a royal repast, fit
for the mouth of a pharaoh. And Polynexia
rubs her body with pure olive oil in the morning.
Athens a cauldron, the two of us a ladle in it,
searching for only a packet of dried molohiya …
All this, just to remember you darling Alexandria!
To bring back the full ecstasy of our youth —
at least as a sensation … Egyptian silverware,
a trident candelabrum on the dining table,
and we were seated in its soft light …
Rice pilaf and pickled capers,
followed by a halva filled with almonds.
Obstinate wax stains remain on the table cloth
used generation after generation,
and in a flash I remember:
even years after the demise of the Ottoman Empire,
“Iʼm an Ottoman subject”, she would say, my grandma.
The National Pact kept her outside the bounds of Turkey —
Ipdji-zadehʼs Haytice Hanım
from Sarayounu Square in the city of Nicosia.
God bless her soul
AUNT-OLOGY
In memory of my great aunt Süreyya Yashin
who brought me up
i Home-Life. Auntie-tongue
Alas! her life was acknowledged in her death
when home-life stopped with the dear old woman’s heart
– none of us would admit his confusion –
But reader! Every poem is a confession.
ii Antie-tongue Carved on Her Headstone
In the English era, the widow lady teacher
was Süreyya at home and Judith to all others,
Flax-haired Lâmia to her friends.
Times have changed,
even her Greek neighbours have changed;
at Sarayönü no family mansion now remains,
nor the house with a garden at Neapolis
– it was war and war and war –
no stone stood on stone any longer…
And then, the Turks came.
She was now Judith at home and Süreyya outside.
Falls for a Carnation
It fell to her to lick the men of our family into shape,
to rub our backs with Vicks and knit us vests,
grandfather, father, me and stillborn nephews.
Spring cleaning preparations fell to her,
the tree to be pruned, the leaky roof,
and the endless cleanining of fairy-tale cabins.
The ruins of our heritage to her, mortgage repayments, dowry,
to arrange lodgings for teachers, sheds for refugees,
transporting the living from one war zone to another;
her lot to keep our local guards awake,
her duty to read the Koran in Arabic for the dead;
to make olive-magic in Latin,
correct my Turkish in red,
and decide on the proper place for the carnation.
.iv Auntie-tongue’s Dragon Tale
But all of a sudden the dragon grows wings
and can fly.
Two cats watch at the gate – ʽgateʼ hence ʽgatteʼ –
We’re guests in our life, and once upon a time
the two faces of the dragon watched the sky
from the Lusignan minaret. [E e e eh?]
Under the tomb of Ahirvan Dede, a fairy
pirouettes, faster and faster
and she might well take off…
The snaky two-forked, double-talking tongue of fire [Hi’ i i i!]
people think it is dead, but it is guarding the buried treasure
– everything has wings –
everything could fly without warning, [Oo’ uu u?!]
and the soul rises to the seventh heaven
as the celestial guestion descends : What was she like?
– good, good, very good –
But the little old woman could turn into serpent at will,
a bird, a firefly, a tiny lizard. [Pü’ ü ü üh…]
Well, are you always an angel? – noo, noo, nooo –
In truth she was the queen of her country,
but so stubborn she always said ʽNo!ʼ
Wartime again, the king’s palace her prison,
but suddenly she can fly.
v Auntie-tongue Prayers and Holy Water
Over the jasmine-fragrant nebulae at dusk
a tiny birdfeather drifts
and great-aunt flies away aged only eigthy-five.
Between the greenplum branches starlight smoke
consecrated with rosewater, incense-kindled.
Innocent as a child
she finds sun-energy wherever she goes
– what’s more she’s aware of what’s going on –
comet-dust-spangled s e r p e n t . . . She’s flying
my dear aunt is flying away,
a thorn-tongued pale-pink wild-rose,
now defiant as a goat, now bursting with laughter,
and without protection.
vi. Father God in Auntie-tongue
Now I’d like God to exist
– please let Him be a kind-hearted Father,
who’ll take care of dear aunt wherever she’s gone.
Because she’s a very old little child,
send her back to our garden, – that’s best –
in the shape of a green-eyed cat.
when a radio’s broken down,
I want to know where a soul goes when the body dies.
Perhaps it perches on the ramparts of Nicosia,
a three-headed dragon puffing hot air
but where does it hide its tail that’s always alive?
My God, so many stories whose endings I don’t know,
and life goes on pressed in my chest.
vii. Every Tongue Tells its Own Death, My Auntie-tongue
Who else is spreading her wings and arms for you: auntie-tongue.
Thought not able to see, you knew there was someone there.
Who will now worry for you, just like the budding almond tree?
And as if you were still at home, daily life goes on
– just as if you still had a home –
Who knows you’ll never come back but awaits your return: auntie-tongue.
Wondering if you feel the cold, what sort of food you eat
Who else can be a wordless loving-heart for you: auntie-tongue.
Who reads all that you write and listen heart and soul
Lifting the curtain of cataract of years from her eyes
And feeling all that you’ve said inside out.
viii Auntie-tongue Hidden by Death
They slid open the ice-box that waits for us all,
I lifted the white sheet, I touched her hair.
In that morgue where I gave my dear aunt that final kiss
I became aware for the first time we had a family,
lying side by side with dead soldiers
whose suicides had been concealed.
ix Eulogy for a Tombestone: Auntie-tongue
Our photographs of a massacre on the wall
– I don’t know, how I have ever lived without these graves
of mother and grandmother, siblings and dear aunt… –
But in this graveyard we’re all side by side
as if we were sitting at dinner together,
I’m better loved here, feel better.
My family is good in death, graceful, modest,
they never demanded pretentious funerals
or pompous tombstones.
Their only request : I should carry them in my heart
and so I carry a cementry inside me, in my words
of love.
DEAD HOUSE
White space empty of the grandfather clock
Walnut table that has forgotten time
Fingerprints cleansed by dust
Keys long lost
Letterbox locked in rust
Old woman fast asleep, her teeth in a glass
Dead House Dead House Dead House
Nothing but poetry can bring me back.
LANDSCAPE
Arodes is a village with a population of 72
including me.
I go to church on Sundays like everybody else
-my father was a good Kemalist-
like all the rest I vote Communist, and I pray
to Christ and Christophias.
And I ogle the only young girl of the village,
-their house is on top of the hill facing the sea,
I go past it every day on my bicycle-
We usually sleep till around nine,
the hens, little asses, goats, pigeons…
This is a place renowned for its beauty :
In the mornings in the vinyards,
in the evenings, by the stream, in the sheep-pen,
[oleanders in bloom —
I keep walking together with everyone else
-but I only watch the view.-
Marika’s Mustafa
The floral window-pane of the gardener’s hut,
please don’t tell on me!
I saw them through the clear heads of the flowers,
oh, yes, floral window-pane.
he stretches and sways, erect, in front
of Marika —
Mustafa must be a bit crazy
undisturbed his wife, too, begins to strip!
O, the fuchsia, on the gardener’s window-pane
as they both tumble around stark naked, intertwined —
like two babies, really,
neither Greek nor Turkish their birdtalk
little fuchsia, flowers like earrings,
I understood nothing, nothing
o fuchsia!
Are they earrings, their moans and groans as they wrestle?
— Marika’s Mustafa is crazy
Marika is even crazier, her earrings dangling.
ding dang ding
Our Cat’s Tale
When I was a child I used to wonder
if our Greek neighbour’s cat
was also Greek.
One day I asked my mum
and she said cats were Turkish
dogs were Greek
and dogs attacked the kittens.
Much later one day
what should I see?
Our cat was eating
her own kitten.
BIOGRAPICAL NOTES ON MEHMET YASHIN
MEHMET YASHIN (Yaşın) (1958, Neapolis/Nicosia), lives between Nicosia, Istanbul and Cambridge. He has studied politics, history and literature in Istanbul, Ankara, Athens, Birmingham and London. With his own poetic understanding and style, his poetry is well known in Cyprus as well as in Turkey since 1985, when his first volume of poetry won the Turkish Academy Prize for Poetry. His first novel also won the Cevdet Kudret Novel Prize (1995) in Turkey. A collection from his selected poems was published in English translation under the recommendation of the British Centre for Literary Translation. His resent book entitled An Inter-Lingual and Inter-Cultuıral Literary Study: The Anthology of Cypriot Poetry (from 9th century BC to 20th century AD) won the Memet Fuat Literary Study and Criticism Prize (2005) in Turkey. His poems have been translated into more than seventeen languages, arranged into music, put on stage, and turned to installations. His works have been subjects of academic research and used as references both in literary criticism and research on Cypriot Studies and Turkish Literature in Cyprus and abroad. He is also accepted as the very first poet and author who is not from Turkey or a Turkish citizen but canonized in Turkish literature. He is known as one of the leading figures in the post-80s Turkish poetry.
HIS PUBLICATIONS: His books of poetry are: My Love The Dead Soldier (1984), Ladder of Light (1986), Pathos (1990), The ChairMan (1993), To Repair a Daydream (1998), Its Name is in the Missing List (2002). His selected poems in English, with the Turkish originals, entitled Donʼt Go Back To Kyrenia: Poems 1977-1997 (translated by Taner Baybars) was published in Britain (Middlesex University Press World Literature Series, 2001). He has published two novels, Your Kinsman Pisces (1994) and The Hours of Deportation (2003), and two collection of essays Poeturka (1995) and Kozmopoetika (2002). He is also the editor and translator of The Anthology of Early Cypriot Poetry (ninth-century BC to eighteenth-century AD) (1999), The Anthology of Turkish-Cypriot Poetry (eighteenth to twentieth-centuries) (1994), and An Inter-Lingual and Inter-Cultural Literary Study: Anthology of Cypriot Poetry (ninth-century BC to twentieth-centuries) (2005). He edited also a volume in English, Step-Mothertongue– From Nationalism to Multiculturalism: Literatures of Cyprus, Greece and Turkey (Middlesex University Press World Literature Series, 2000).
