Aşık Veysel (1894- 1973)

22/2/2007

 

Your beauty is utterly worthless

 

Your beauty is utterly worthless
If I dont love you
You can not find any place to enjoy
If there is not a home in my heart

Who would read? Who would write?
Who would unravel this knot?
Sheep would get along well with wolf
Unless thoughts vary

Your beautiful face would not be seen
This love would not be revived inside me
Rose would not be valued
If there were not lovers

I took this cry from you
This was the taste of world
Name Veysel would not be remembered
If he did not love you.

 

Aşık Veysel

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Ataol Behramoğlu, (1942-....)

18/2/2007

 

Love is For Two

The wind changes direction
Suddenly the leaves fade
The boat at sea loses its way
Searches for a port in vain
The smile of a stranger
Has stolen your beloved from you
The poison accumulating inside you
Will kill itself only
It is death  which is lived alone
Love is for two

Not a single trace is left
From nightlong lovemakings
Thousands of years away is
The skin you've touched a thousand times
The poems you could have written
Are written and done with
It is death which is lived alone
Love is for two

No consolation to you
Are the songs you know
Pain is unchained
Waters flow backwards
Even if you draw your love like a dagger
It serves only to kill it
The wayward bird of love
Has flown away with no warning
It is death which is lived alone
Love is for two

You're simply a lost song
Consumed and degraded
A child weeps in your dreams
As the night brushes against the windows
For no butterfly
Lives its love alone
No insect is alone
No bird is alone when in love
It is death which is lived alone
Love is for two

translated by Suat Karantay

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Can Yücel (1926-1999)

18/2/2007

 

Man's Principal Law

 

This is man's law of the blood:
to make wine from the grape
to strike fire from the stone
and human beings from kisses


This is man's law of the soul:
no matter what happens to live
in the face of poverty and wars
and a thousand and one calamities!


This is man's law of reason:
to convert water to light
to render the dream true
to make the enemy a friend!


This is man's principal law
from the child on all fours
to the runner in space
to be always on course!

Translated by Ruth Christie

 

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Nazım Hikmet (1902-1963)

17/2/2007

 

Today is Sunday

Today is Sunday.
For the first time they took me out into the sun today.
And for the first time in my life I was aghast
that the sky is so far away
          and so blue
          and so vast
              I stood there without a motion.
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion
leaning against the white wall.
Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to roll
Or about strife or freedom or my wife right now.
The soil, the sun and me...
I feel joyful and how.

Nazim Hikmet
Translated by Talat Sait Halman.
(Literature East & West, March 1973)

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