LEYLA IŞIK

 

LEYLA IŞIK

About Most Of Us

 

Yesterday, today, and tomorrow

We have lived, we live, and we shall live

Who knows how frequently a smile would stick to the lips,

how many heart beats and awaiting something unknown with no end,

through having our hands taking refuge in our pockets.

Isn’t it our looking as near as where we are tagged in the place we hide

when we raise our head? What we hide

when we hide…

Our reckoning with life through an estimation, plus and minus,

Now our bodies grew older in search of the ages of mid-twenties.

Hide and seek played on the street,

slide, nine tiles.

Our remonstration mixed with the voice

of “the game is not over yet”

and “your father will come soon” in the evening,

as the half-completed game stayed in our minds.

Our being dragged to home like a shoe’s sole that is about to come off.

We were still supposed to vault over each other’s stooped backs

by playing the game of leapfrog.

We were supposed to sell butter and honey non-existent,

and to run after our handkerchief not to get it seized

We were supposed to plunge into our dreams by filling our empty stomachs with games.

Some of us as a mother,

some of us as a father,

some of us as a child,

we were supposed to rehearse life inside our playing house.

Already here!

We became a mother, a father.

Yet

there is a hidden “child”

in most of us

English Translation By Mesut Şenol

 

As Keeping Quiet

 

"In the place of a heart getting old as keeping quiet/ I put a heart growing its hope as it keeps hearing your voice/ and I kiss that heart on the most beautiful part of it…”

Was it the time passed or was it us who spent time so wildly?

We the ones putting years on our hearts from different parts within the same time section.

Don’t think that your words don’t rule the roost your tired wings even though you go through the separations as the crow flies,

don’t think your love would not come when asked “come”

your love you fitted in the life of a butterfly.

Everything you forgave for their sake…

Who knows other than you / other than me…

The warmth of my hands turned into a life,

I became your crowd in the loneliness of another city.

And

you placed my heart into yours.

You always gaze off into the view dolefully.

You set images between unread poems.

As you know, your love could get back to you with all its appearances.

During the dreamy travels you got lost in thoughts

Your lips lock on your lips

I k n o w i t

Y o u m i s s

English Translation By Mesut Şenol

 

Dream Of Me…

 

Dream of me…

at dusk, my hands inside my pockets,

while challenging pains with the heat of a cigarette being used up on my lips…

As I was being driven away in front of you because of an unconditional, helpless love,

by hoping for a help and leaning my lips against the springs with their water run dry,

as I was intending to drink your loneliness to my heart’s desire with my thirst for you.

Dream of me…

By kneeling for tens and hundreds of times in my helplessness,

with my prayers for seeing you,

and your indifference to my disarrayed scattering of my life.

My walking on the deserted streets all night long as a loose cannon.

Either with the accompaniment of the hungry street cats foraging around for food...

Or my pouring out my grief to each other with a dozed off drunk on the bench.

You closed all the gates in your heart to love.

You deafened your ear to my love remarks, and made your tongue mute.

You are being silent like the fast running time.

You keep quiet like the darkness of bottomless pits.

Dream of me.

And please hear me!

Destroy the unseen walls in your heart,

just eliminate the barriers on the way heading to love.

I need you, don’t turn your back to me.

I am like a child who lost his/her way, and awaiting being tagged.

Let this longing be over.

Hold my hand and take me where I want to be with you…

Pinch me

Let me wake up from this dream.

Whatever happens

stay by me,

till eternity!

 

English Translation By Mesut Şenol

 

LEYLA IŞIK