Delirium

The black snow runs down from the rooftops;
A red finger dips into your brow;
Blue snow flakes sink into the empty room,
They are a lovers’ dying mirrors.
Heavy and torn to pieces the mind muses,
Follows the shadow in the mirror of blue snow flakes,
The cold smile of a deceased harlot.
The evening’s wind weeps in the scent of carnations.

(Georg Trakl)

They can't hear it.
They don't listen to leaves
in the moon light. The mystical
whisper of branches rubbing.

Funny what happens to a life
when trees start talking to you.
When you hear the voices of your
garden.

(Charles P. Ries)

Where It Comes From

There's a poem between your legs, &
off at the corners of your eyes.
You can't see it but suspect,
feel it warm, moist at the center,
pulling the world inside you.

There's a poem in your hair:
tangled today, & painful to comb through.
One on your lips, too, like the taste of your
last cigarette. There's a poem in your smile,
except that you're not smiling now,
not in the mood. There's another
beside you like a ghost or pillow you hold
with arms & thighs like an old lover as you try
to sleep & forget yet
lie awake, remembering.

There's a poem in your garbage.
Perhaps you put it there, or haven't seen it yet.
It smells like apricots, coffee, & blood,
tastes of yesterday's brandy.

There's a poem in the space between
your tongue & the nearest ear.
It's invisibly silent like a radio wave: so,
turn yourself on, listen close. It's everywhere
at once, & you give it voice like a tree
that falls in the woods.

(Ace Boggess)

There Must Be Something

Is the sea as beautiful as this every day?
Does the sky look like this all the time?
Is this furniture, this window
always as lovely as this?

No
by God no,
There must be something behind this somewhere.

Orhan Veli Kanik

Bir Is Var

Her gun bu kadar guzel mi bu deniz?
Boyle mi gorunur gokyuzu her zaman?
Her zaman guzel mi bu kadar,
Bu esya, bu pencere?

Degil,
Vallahi degil;
Bir is var bu isin icinde.

Orhan Veli Kanik

Betoverende poëzie

Bezeten was ik van Baudelaire, toen ik jong was, in Parijs.
Dronken was ik van Het Balkon, De Schoonheid en De Reis.

Zijn poëzie doordrong mijn ziel als diepe smart;
Zoals suiker in absint zich kristal na kristal onthardt.

Die andere wereld, zo geschapen door zijn verbeelding!
De opiumtuinen met laurieren, die weelderige omgeving ...

In het hart van het betoverend paradijs, waarvan elk genot
Een verbod was, lag de smaak van een duizendsoortig geluk.

Op een dag nam ik toen afscheid van die wereld en dat leven
Keerde naar het universum van mijn land met heel mijn wezen.

Sedert de in die tuinen doorgebrachte jaren evenwel
Zijn die bloemen van poëzie in mijn hart niet verwelkt.

Yahya Kemal Beyatli

Let It Go

It is this deep blankness is the real thing strange.
The more things happen to you the more you can't
Tell or remember even what they were.

The contradictions cover such a range.
The talk would talk and go so far aslant.
You don't want madhouse and the whole thing there.

-- William Empson

What Love Is Like

Love is like
a pineapple,
sweet and
undefinable.

-- Piet Hein

Poems on Travelling

I.

When you're travelling,
The stars talk to you.
What they day
Is often sad.

II.

The song one whistles
While drunk in the evenings
Is merry,
But the same song
From inside of a train window
Isn't.

Orhan Veli
Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, 1989

To keep Busy

The beautiful women thought
The love poems I wrote
Were about them,
And I always suffered
Knowing that I wrote them
To keep busy.

Orhan Veli
Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, 1989

The Poem of being Lonely

They don't know,
Those who don't live alone,
How frightening is
Soundlessness;
How a person talks to himself,
How he runs to mirrors,
Hungry for a soul,
They don't know it.

Orhan Veli
Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, 1989

The Wave

To think myself happy
I don't need a piece of paper or a pen;
A cigarette dangling between my fingers
I enter the blue
Of the painting on the wall.

I enter it, the sea pulls me,
It pulls me, the world snares me;
Is there something like alcohol,
Alcohol in the air,
Making me mad, making me sad?

I can recognize a lie
When I see it;
It's a lie that I became a boat;
The coolness of water on my ribs
Is a lie,
The wind on the watchtower's a lie,
The motorboat which has been chugging along
For weeks...

Nevertheless,
I can still spend, still spend
Beautiful days
In this blue,
Like the watermelon rind swimming in the sea,
Like the reflection of the tree in the sky,
Like the fog which envelops the plum trees in the morning,
The fog, the mist, the love, the smells...

II.

Neither paper nor pencil
Can make me think myself happy.
I'll say it again,
This is nonsense
I'm not a ship.
I must be in a definite, definite
Place
Unlike the rind of watermelon
Or light or fog or mist...
Like a human being.

Orhan Veli
Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, 1989

My Shadow

I am through
Dragging it
All these years
At the tip of my feet.
About time
We live a little,
My shadow
At someplace,
I
Someplace else.

Orhan Veli
Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, 1989

Lulu, my Lulu

I also wish to have black friends
With strange unknown names
And sail with them
From Madagascar to ports in China.
I wish one of them to stand on the deck,
Watching the stars, to sing
''Lulu, my Lulu'' every night.

I wish to meet
One of them
In Paris
One day.

Orhan Veli
Translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat, 1989