|
|
|
|
Attila İlhan (1925- … )
Another Man They beter leave her alone unmolested that blind Alsatian woman who plays polkas by heart on her harmonica the girl in whom the songs start and end had beter go along the Boulevard Raspail each night just leave her alone that woman who plays the harmonica when the lights vanish some night don’t drag me behind the walls don’t drag her away
the drugged clouds of Zuider Zee haunt his memory while a Dutch painter paints nothing but turqouise skies from dawn to dusk on the quay of Orf evre kids drift along the shore of a song their hands cleansed pure in the rain barefoot and dreamy-eyed their laughter endless their teras unwept
I saw the stars scuttling along the seashore their irises were ridged deep with flaming lines while the South wind fushed I shivered
beyond all enormity as the beacons stared into darkness like orphans on the coast of Palermo and Calabria sailors stood on decks vagrant and sad with melancholy eyes unknown unseen unfelt on the coast of Palermo and Calabria the beacons stared into darkness like orphans and I the poet of the anvil and the wrench poured forth righteous poems humane poems line by line as one would cast lead all the way from İstanbul to Marseille
wind in the boulevards wind in the Luxembourg gardens kids toss the last leaves in the air and down below like the pulse-beat of another world miners’ hammers clang and subways scurry like baby moles the harmonica soundb timid and distant on the pavements the sghts of Paris linger and in the sky now swift now open a fast blue fast clouds red birdsare embroidered on your mittens and sky and the pavements you and Paris you and Paris my love and each singing a different tune those trips and fare wells
In Ubengi-Shari under virgin stars in pure and honest eyes within four walls cityless and unradioed and an unsurpassed adulation fiercely and savagely the wildest ivies burn
then a man shoulders the susurrant forest the arrogant howls of jackals and the jackals themselves a greasy jet-black man with a greasy pitch-black kinky beard
I am a man another man a vagabond who dumped his youth headlong into the streets and tossed away his hopes like pigeons lost them time and time again lost them in the graveyard of ships in his cruel poems and songs found them time and time again then he dragged the dawn’s shrieks by the hair there goes the sea and there goes he there goes the cloud and there goes he a man a different man a vagabond (Translated by Talat Sait Halman, 101Poems by 101Poets An Anthology of Turkish Poetry) |
