He isn’t the kind that dies, he says,
\nDid I suggest the opposite
\nAs I stood looking at his face?
\nBut there’s no hiding around here, my dear Sir.
\nDoesn’t he know that in these streets
\nDeath is present in the eyes of everyone?<\/p>\n
He takes out a ledger or two with old writing \u2013
\n\u2018His last will and testament’
\nI bend towards it, as if this will make things clearer.
\nWe’ll hide, won’t we, my dear Sir?
\nWe’ll hide as much as we can hide in this forsaken place.<\/p>\n
Here, houses abandoned in every street
\nA thousand years of history summarized in architecture. I wonder –
\nDoes he love the years he has lived? Accept
\nthe ones collapsed and gone. They say
\nwine still burns his throat \u2013 is it strange to celebrate that?
\nI am confronted with a sweet and sneaky fate.<\/p>\n
It’s snowing hard outside, we line up all we have
\nAround a tin can made of fire
\nWe’re not kids now. More’s the pity I think
\n\u2018The man’s glad about it, my dear Sir.’ Let’s hope
\nBlacks and sleepless Bulgarians don’t rush out
\nLet’s hope incomprehensible oaths don’t collide in the exhaust fumes
\nHe couldn’t care less that he had died and was in the street
\nHow it happened I don’t know. I was just the one he stopped to talk to there.<\/p>\n
Now I’m a stranger in these parts \u2013 good thing, too,
\nThat I’m a stranger to this shitty world of ours-
\nFor it’ll set on fire the knots inside our heads
\nI talk of dreams I think are really great,
\nLimitless maps and so on \u2013 and even though
\nMaybe no-one’s listening, that’s just fine by me.<\/p>\n
It’s snowing hard outside
\nAnd I keep rubbing that summary of history in my palm
\nI’m so afraid, what if no-one listens? Not a soul…<\/p>\n
It’s snowing hard outside
\n\u2018But there’s no summary of life, my dear Sir’
\nThis loneliness of fire
\nWill always find a tin can to burn in
\nTo melt away the barbed wire it comes up against.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In The Midst of Darkness<\/strong><\/p>\n an old man and I are chatting – earthquakes past and future in the papers – rivers burst their banks various statistics from the Tuzla shipyards, a mirror in the old man’s eyes <\/p>\n Me and My Toy Lightning Flashes<\/strong><\/p>\n D’you think it didn’t happen, my dear friend? In the city of great dreams and great lies, let’s get this clear, For the bus driver it’s the steel feathers Look at his Istanbul, Look, there’s nothing at all in common between that guy and hope But you don’t even know, do you? That <\/p>\n An Excuse<\/strong><\/p>\n broken bottles and that crutch of his around I know each child has unanswered questions, and but first of all, like the gulls circling around the city tip, Oh for the sake of a thousand beavers! If we must die For the first thing we must remember is our dreams. The guy holds out his wine to me, <\/p>\n The Forgettable Death of Engin \u00c3\u2021eber<\/strong><\/p>\n A man is dead A man is dead Let it lie, We never knew who Engin \u00c3\u2021eber was And I am sure he was not afraid of death, If I could just hear the last beat of his heart You left us and became a single face in the morning <\/p>\n Looking at You<\/strong><\/p>\n Upturning the turtle, little girl runs away Trans. by Raman Mundair<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n He takes out a ledger or two with old writing \u2014 By Efe Duyan<\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[484,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-maintenant","category-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32100\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nabout things – he’s fed up with everything.
\nLeaning towards me, an elbow on the table
\nhe says that life is simple if we get rid of assumptions<\/p>\n
\n– A Chinese man covered himself from head to toe with his eyelids<\/p>\n
\n– where is Burma? I’d like to know.<\/p>\n
\na picture of a young man who didn’t know he was going to die
\nhe’d been going to a tea garden in the evening
\n– where did the newsman get that bit of information I’d like to know…?<\/p>\n
\nwhispers of things in decades yet to come
\nwhen page three photos are full of my faces
\nand getting old is just a lie
\nthings I have forgotten are like a knife
\nas soon as they are cut off –
\nwhat does it matter if no-one knows our honesty.<\/p>\n
\nI’ve told small lies and fibs, of course I have.
\nThey’re like loose change here in my pockets
\nAnd of course I’ve told much bigger ones as well.<\/p>\n
\nEveryone’s Istanbul belongs to them alone.
\nMine belongs to several women
\n-no names, of course-
\nFull of all they have thrown out of other towns
\nEverybody’s days belong to them, dear friend
\nJust as everybody goes and lives their death themselves:<\/p>\n
\nOf the Bosphorus Bridge that give him wings;
\nThe Governor’s Office for the retired policeman;
\nThe entrance door of a pistol pointed at his head;
\nThe street I walk down of a morning is the middle
\nOf a handfull of pills for a woman who’s been left;
\nAnd the pavements of Surdibi are
\nThe eyes of a homeless man who’s gazing into mine
\nYou, like a god with his nose in air, pathetic and disguised –
\nBe sure to take a good look at the world!<\/p>\n
\nBut you can’t touch it, just look
\nLike low-down angels; new observations
\nWrite new verdicts in the margin in books of dreams
\nThe Istanbul inside his overcoat \u2013 forbid that for a start\u2013
\nA few banknotes hidden in a shoe \u2013 give that away.
\nHe’s heard of Ayasophia \u2013 now talk about its architectural features \u2013
\nBut you and your toy lightning flashes –
\nAll you can do is pass on to History what you’ve seen, all you can do
\nIs be dead scared of what you’ve seen, face the tree and count to ninety-nine<\/p>\n
\nBut he loves this city more than anyone, smile
\nAt the sun that will hit your face a moment later and
\nMaybe it’ll smile back at you.<\/p>\n
\nThere’s a cloud covering the sun.
\nNow who’s going to be sorry for whom?
\nYou for him
\nOr he for you, who knows?<\/p>\n
\nI put myself in his place, knowing
\nthat walking is happiness itself etcetera\u2026<\/p>\n
\nhappy endings only exist in dust on windows at the back<\/p>\n
\nwe must hunt with marble balls, one by one,
\nfor things we in this neighbourhood know as fear
\nAnd then we must go and find that question<\/p>\n
\nthen we must die together. Lets in any case –
\nisn’t that why I’m here?
\nbut as the local train goes clattering on its way
\nI forget all I’ve learnt from the blackboard
\nof cracked walls we pass.
\nOn arriving home it’s all gone from my head.<\/p>\n
\nThat waking up, etcetera, is happiness itself.
\nThen we must release the seagulls near the tip into the sea<\/p>\n
\nI must find a good excuse.<\/p>\n
\nI do not know him,
\nHe is just another face in the morning paper
\nI stared at him for a second
\nAnd we shared a moment
\nOne mask to another
\nHis name a misprint
\nI realise later. When
\nDid life become a foreign word?<\/p>\n
\nI didn’t even think about him
\nLet this be my crime
\nMy share of the common ball of sins.<\/p>\n
\nA man is dead
\nWind the violence like a clock
\nThat ceremonial nothingness, the syrup of consolation
\nThat cloud of forgetting,
\nLet the lie puppet my life
\nLet my heart pump this lie.
\nLet it flow in my veins
\nA man is dead
\nLet me hide the stench of death with autumn air
\nLet me walk in a country of lies
\nAnd let me include you in my blame. <\/p>\n
\nHe was born, he grew up and the details
\nof his death are reported in my morning paper:
\nwhen he was beaten up by the police on the street,
\nat the police station in \u00c4\u00b0stinye;
\nin a cell at the Metris prison,
\njust before he lost consciousness in a hospital.
\nHe was all alone<\/p>\n
\nbut rather of the not being understood
\nThis alone closed the sleepless nights of revolution on his eyes
\nAnd his adventure in history
\nWas left incomplete.
\nThis loneliness is not his, but ours
\nHis heart’s desire is not his, but our <\/p>\n
\nTouch the last object he looked at, know his last words
\nOr when he last laughed \u2013 if I could know these things.
\nYour friends say that you liked to laugh, that you never took
\nYour hat off but in your prison photo your head is bare.
\nI wonder about you. I want to know you. For instance,
\nwhat did you think of last? Were you thinking of your past lovers?
\nYour friends tell me you were cheerful
\nI didn’t know you but your picture makes me wonder –
\nDid you really love life so much?<\/p>\n
\npaper. You left us in the gap between sorrow and curses.
\nA man is dead
\nI did not know him,
\nI stared at him for a second
\nAnd we shared the same moment.
\nIn a moment I will take a hat from my wardrobe
\nand I will wonder \u2013 \u2018Is it something you would wear?’<\/p>\n
\nFor the first time, turtle sees sky<\/p>\n![\"efe-duyan\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/efe-duyan.jpg\")
\nABOUT THE AUTHOR<\/strong>
\nEfe Duyan<\/strong>, born 1981 in \u00c4\u00b0stanbul, is a poet and architect. After graduating from the German School of \u00c4\u00b0stanbul he studied Architecture and Philosophy at Middle East Technical University (B.A.) and History and Theory of Architecture in Y\u00c4\u00b1ld\u00c4\u00b1z Tecnical University (M.S). He teaches architecture at Mimar Sinan University. His poems and essays have been published in several literary reviews such as Edebiyat Ele\u00c5\u0178tiri<\/em>, \u00c3\u2013teki\u201d\u0090Siz<\/em>, Damar<\/em>, Kavram Karma\u00c5\u0178aand Akk\u00c3\u00b6y<\/em>. He has been on editorial boards of the reviews Nikbinlik<\/em>, Damar<\/em>, Sol<\/em> and Sanat Cephesi<\/em>. He has published one collection of poems, Takas<\/em> (2006) with Kemal \u00c3\u2013zer. His book The Construction of Characters in N\u00c3\u00a2z\u00c4\u00b1m Hikmet’s Poetry <\/em>was published in 2008. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"![\"efe-duyan\"](\"https:\/\/www.3ammagazine.com\/3am\/\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/12\/efe-duyan-150x150.jpg\")
He isn’t the kind that dies, he says,
\nDid I suggest the opposite
\nAs I stood looking at his face?
\nBut there’s no hiding around here, my dear Sir.
\nDoesn’t he know that in these streets
\nDeath is present in the eyes of everyone?<\/p>\n
\n\u2018His last will and testament’
\nI bend towards it, as if this will make things clearer.
\nWe’ll hide, won’t we, my dear Sir?
\nWe’ll hide as much as we can hide in this forsaken place…<\/p>\n