Five Poems
By Gonca Özmen.
Winds Like These
These things happen, winds like these
This autumn balcony calls me
Whatever your hands dispense at night
I gather up my hair and rivers too
Then I go and undress in front of a poem
I kiss a child its name becomes love
Everything is distant from us
When with us, nothing is alone
I accent a little sorrow to this presence
There’s a tree in your hands
I’m looking at a bustling tree in your hands
You sit, eating a peach
Grass is walking, I say, don’t you see
Oppressive rain passes the window
I call out to myself, there’s no reply
O my love, there’s a needle between us
Stitching me to you
Translated by George Messo
The Land Of Mulberry
Come to the land of mulberry
To the remoteness of dwellings
I’ll teach you quiet
And the branches’ concern
I’ll kiss where you’re waning
Where nature wanes
Cross the plain
Come to the land of mulberry
Into the grasses
I’ll make you listen to the storm
To the scream of the storm-god
A long while later
I’ll wait for you again
Beyond a stream
Cross the field
Come closer come
To the mulberry scent
I’ll show you the ants
Translated by Ruth Christie
Cross-Breed
I read Dante I stripped a man white
A good child I lay down and took stock
My losses great, my gains many, my sins sweet
See how I’m reduced to bushes and brambles
I asked about birds I delved in the forest white
I stripped myself bare and headed out
How great to stop between your shoulder and evening
I looked long at distant mallows
I read Dante I kissed a soldier white
Once like a whole town asleep
I came back the echo of a stone you threw
The world sometimes, sometimes the world is one blood only
I sat then I found a mouth that would be silent
We mixed together forlorn and white
My book, my sacred text, my mixed child
I reek because of you
I read Dante I knocked down a state black
Translated by Ruth Christie and Mel Kenne
Mustafa
I peeled the orange Mustafa
I placed you at my bedside
A bed, look, no wider than a grave
Just like that deep down I’d offered myself
Thin sword, thin blood, slim death
This condemnation I invented myself
Dumma dumma dum in every man a woman
The one romping inside me had black eyes
One, Mustafa, doesn’t call out my name any more
They think this one’s a love poem too, so let them
Their umbrellas are large
They’re not getting wet
These skies must be pulled down Mustafa, pulled down
In people deep down lies their boundlessness
Keep me cool Mustafa
Keep me cool
In being alive lies the word’s being
To return, those children in far off homes
Translated by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne
Memet
Take these ratta-tats Memet
Take them to the ratta-tatta man
Take this me Memet
Take this me to the meadows
Do I know what to do with me?
To me, I’m always a seabattle Memet
Take this me to the birds
Drop this me to the poor suburbs
Battling’s a backpack anyway Memet
Besides can a wound get old
Just keep me waiting again on a pillow-bed
Even the apple awaits its time
Just … me in a big old urn…
Deeper even deeper Memet
Just watch what a carnival, the human race
Does the ratta-tatta man
Ever ratta-tat the ratta-tat Memet?
Best if you dump me in with the poor Memet
Take this me, throw this me off the minaret
Translated by Saliha Paker and Mel Kenne
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gonca Özmen was born in Burdur (southern Turkey) in 1982. She was awarded with Ali Rıza Ertan Poetry Prize in 1999. Her first poetry book Kuytumda (In My Nook) was published in 2000, winning Orhan Murat Arıburnu Poetry Prize. She won Berna Moran Poetry Prize given by Istanbul University in 2003. Her second book Belki Sessiz (Maybe Quiet) was published in February 2008. She edits the magazine of literary translation Ç.N. (Çevirmenin Notu). Her poems are translated into Spanish, French, English, German, Slovenian and Persian. The Sea Within (Selected Poems, translated by George Messo) was published by Shearsman Books in February 2011. She has been living in Istanbul since 2000.
First published in 3:AM Magazine: Sunday, January 22nd, 2012.
