LEYLA IŞIK

 

LEYLA IŞIK

 

Affectionately…

 

I slept, and I woke up. When nearly I reached the end of the road, I looked back at what we left behind. I was holding an old photograph stretching today from yesterday.

I am being lost in thought, I pick a record and you put it on the gramophone.

Music starts playing slowly, I would like to speak, you put your fingers over my lips and make me shush. I am gulping. Two compassionate arms embrace my body and I close my eyes. Your breath which is my life, licks the flames. You plant an innocent kiss on my nose. As if we are in the high seas, and the sun sets again.

At my heart the dead of winter closed the roads. Did the winter arrive? A knee-deep separation sits in this season. I am going almost to get lost inside calendar pages, and I take a look at the page in the yellow season, in fact we are in October…It rains again, even though my tears don’t rain, they are about to drop from the edge of my eyelashes.

Whomever chased it though, the night is after me.

I am running away “cross with the time when I got to know you”

I leave a note beside other ones, I then prison them

I wait for the answer stating “here I came, let’s get ready, we are leaving”,

I wait for days. Like plucking the hair of the calendar pages. I forget how much time passes.

I was holding an old photograph stretching today from yesterday….

Slowly as if stopping time on tiptoe. Your footfalls arrive before you.

I wait behind the door out of breath. I can smell your fragrance.

The door gets open slightly, your eyes are on my eyes.

I can see sadness.

We exchange glances. We don’t hold hard feelings.

All stars are landing on one by one.

The night is being stripped off the stars and the moon…

You hold my hand and take me to the sky affectionately. 

English Translation by Mesut Şenol

 

Ah, My Dear, Ah!

 

Today is the last day of September,

as it was told by the calendar page…

There is only a small amount of time

“few days pass quickly” they say,

It is not like that however.

My eyes at the door had woven sadness for days.

I look in the mirror; it is a photo I have never seen.

I close my face with your face,

I am looking for the ashes of my youth you burnt in my hair.

My tears remind me of the rain,

they are besotted with greening again a dried rose between pages.

My body seems to be a rocking shadow of the poplar tree…

Darkness is leaning against the walls.

Ah, my dear, ah!

Anxieties are dropping from my heart and they are getting multiplied.

Did the days become shorter, or is it lives?

Or can one handle the lack of the fragrance of longing for the lover whole time.

If only one would not know that one day, the lover would come…

If you come, you gather that you are not going back.

All return tickets are sold out, there is no service of the last train.

Figure it out!

You cannot run that road out of breath.

English Translation by Mesut Şenol 

 

S I HEARD OF...

 

As I heard of, you are about to come at the paused moment of my life. My tears were drowned in my joyfulness. I cried alongside with the rain. I embrace whatever is over-excited. For the sake of not being hurt, my heart is being fallen on your heart as light as a feather…

 

Now I am supposed to get ready by getting rid of being in the captivity of sadness, and I am to mess up my hair. Carrying the spring scent, I have to tell about the time never ending without you through smiling taken from the roses on my face, my looks emerging at the fire of longing. You just shut up and listen. What I am going to talk about has to do with the longing of the two hearts… It is about how I relieve the deep pains stretching down the pit of the night, how I applied time to turn it into an ointment…

 

As I heard of, you are coming… Nice! I am no longer going to dream of you by lying down in the dark colored nights, and the ceiling is not going to stare at my eyes, and the walls are not going to come over me and judge me unquestioned. I am not going to envy my curtain playing with the wind. The day is going to be filtered through my window; the roses of my curtain are going to blossom again, and they are going to drop on my palms smelling you. I am going to freshen up out of your absence, and I am going to towel down myself with happiness.

 

I heard of, you are coming… I am glad. At present time, your footsteps did not say that you are coming. I planted a kiss on the lips of the night out of happiness. Please do not worry! By forgetting everything, I buried my pains. I am not going to look for answers to my questions by making peace with my oaths. I am going to set up time again and to draw your Picture on the walls by my eyelashes. I am going to harden heart on my side suffering your absence. The outmoded mirror is going to give back my face. I am going to see us again in the mirror through a pureness of a carnation.

 

English Translation by Mesut Şenol

 

LEYLA IŞIK