AYCAN SARAÇOĞLU

 

AYCAN SARAÇOĞLU

 

Departures

 

Some from life

Some from homeland

My people are departing

 

Hearts are resentful

And sad

Bodies tired and worn-out

Pains were withheld

Pains accumulated

In their personality

It is a homeland

It is a world that

Has lost its taste

And humour.

 

Some from the world

Some from motherland

One by one they take wings

My people are diminishing

This is a sour homeland

And a starless world.

 

TRANSLATED BY YAŞAR İSMAILOĞLU

 

 

Jasmine Scents Jump Out Of My Bosom

 

 

This is an island of love.

My heritage is same as Aphrodite's.

Jasmine scents jumps out of my bosom

 

A heart with no love,

A garden lacking jasmine is meaningless

 

Spoken words can forsake the loved one.

But the heart never does.

 

Legendary brave hearts

sing in different tongues

Love assumes an epic quality in Cyprus.

 

This is an island of love.

My heritage is same as Aphrodite's.

Jasmine scents jumps out of my bosom.

 

TRANSLATED BY ERTANÇ HIDAYETTIN

 

 

 

Life

 

Should I say banishment

Or migration of my departure

Leaving behind

Your place of birth

Places that you have grown up

It is not easy to separate from friends

From love ones

It is like a fish out of water

In a strange land

 

Always long for

The news from your motherland

Live the days and

every movements in two pieces

Live every grief

Every anxiety

Every joy in superficially

 

Always

News from homeland

Occupies your mind

You flatter like wounded bird

Could you understand me if

You have not separated from your love ones

If you have not tested

That brackish water

I very well understand Nazim’s poem

The Home land Yearning

 

 

And the songs of Ahmet Kaya

The struggle

The betrayal

 

Do I name it as banishment or migration

my departure from homeland

Do you know what it means

The sobbing in silence mixing with your dreams

To start again and again

To anchor in a big ocean

And more importantly

isn’t not

to surrender

Holding up upright

The human dignity

And more important

Not to kill the hope and

To live, to live like a human being.

 

AYCAN SARAÇOĞLU

AYCAN SARAÇOĞLU was born on the 22nd July 1963 of a family of five children. She is the fourth one. Aycan completed Primary Education in Episkopi village, Limassol in Cyprus. She completed her Secondary School in Lapithos, Kyrenia district after the war in 1974. She continued her higher education by attending Economic studies at the Open Economics Faculty of Anadolu University for two years. After her higher education she worked at several businesses and the Turkish Cypriot Electricity Authority. Aycan was very active in politics and worked with several political parties and movements (none - governmental organisations). She immigrated to United Kingdom with her husband and two sons in 1999. Aycan have attended several training courses in order to gain new skills and improve her chance of employability. She then took an employment to run the Road Safety Project aimed towards the Turkish Speaking communities in Haringey in London. Aycan have been the administrator of the Enfield Cypriot Association’s Mothers and Toddlers Project. She worked as a programme producer and a TV presenter with one of the local Turkish Cypriot TVs in London. Poetry is Aycan’s significant part of life. Her poems and articles have been published in several newspapers and magazines. Her elder brother Ercan Turgut who was studying in a university was shot dead on his first year in Turkey. Losing her beloved brother has increased her aspirants to lean toward poetry. Aycan started to participate in local poetry competitions in early age and receiving awards has encouraged her to write more poems. Aycans’s poems reflects her way of life and hopes. Therefore her poetry voice friendship, struggle for freedom, peace and love. Aycan has published her own poetry book called “A Bird In My Arms” in March 2018 in Turkish & English languages. Her book was introduced to poem lovers in England and Cyprus. Aycan produced and host programs on the radio and television channels operating in Cyprus, She also became an editor of the art and culture section of a newspaper.