NEVIN KOÇOĞLU

 

Requiem

To Anna Akhmatova

 

Sojourn:

 

Hereby, afront scarlet voiceless walls

Gowned women in black, weary and grieved

In the queue reminding a long road to nowhere

I waited no less than three hundred hours,

dangling like a pendulum,

like the fruitless branches ruffled by the wind,

carrying the hurt of closed doors on my face

rusty echoes within me, of the iron bolts

like the suffering, lonesome poplar,

I waited three hundred hours,

Like a thirsty animal charred in the sun

 

Testimony:

 

Birds were hanging down on the rusty edge of the night

And Neva was flowing imitating Don

Siberia-like lips of women,

Mothers carrying their mourning on the bosom, 

Shivering with every crow caw, every dawn

An elderly dame with grey hair cut the crowd open

and whispered ‘'Will you write all these?''

 

Ah Leningrad, the city of undead

This poem is versed with a nail onto my skin

with the howling of wounded beast,

 

The song of the locomotive, and the voice I swallowed quietly

And the requiem I elegized in my ashtray,

scattered autumn stepping in my room

When will you come the longed-for rest, 

 

Don't cry for me:

 

My son, I call out for you, behind the misty hopes,

I do not know if you are alive and well

 

I have been weeping for seventeen months,

calling you back home

my eye lashes are made of salt, eye lids are iron

and a very long sorrow passing through my body

No interpretation of my dreams

I am left with the night only,

Have mercy on me!

I appeal to the star of death.

 

Don't you ever tell me not to cry! ...

 

Translated By: Hale Koray

 

Like A Wounded Deer

To Sergey Yesenin

 

"A met a poet

He was referring to it as thou

while talking to a lily"

Whereas I was constantly raising scarlet glasses

to the cherianthiuses and resedas

while resting my head on my beloved’s chest

 

 

Then my mind spoke to my heart

'You should have run after a lacy butterfly flock

While the willow's hair touching your face

bye the riverbank.

Why are you dressed in this ‘Iron Costume'’

 

Tell Me Isadora

which thunderstorm swung me into the realm of my loneliness

why are the calendar moves slow here

why can I not hug a drenched dog, a scarred cat

I get oil in my hands whatever I touch

 

I am the last poet of the village

it's like my mom calls out from behind the garden gate.

prayer and sorrow together pour out of your month

I will back soon my old one, don't cry

love of country aches like a deep cut in my palm

 

Oh, my beloved brother Shura

To Russia's reputed, vagrant, and unhappiest poet

sing that song that my mother used to sing softly

let my soul wander through the green fields, listening to the sound of the dogs.

My grief will end one day, as "death is nothing new."

 

"Goodbye my friend goodbye"

Death comes, goes through me like a Finnish dagger

I drink my last water like a wounded deer so that my fire will be extinguished.

Death may come with my own hand; I may hang on the arm of a flowery chains

And some spring flowers fall prematurely into the ground

 

Farewell my friend!

one day I shall germinate anew at Yesenino...

 

Translated By: Hale Koray

 

Vertigo Of Turtledove

 

I am writing this to the sky

Five days left for equinox

 

I was picked from root of a skinny grass

When I was singing the song of foggy valleys

My butterfly was pinned to the night

from the wings and your hand

A blood dropping from wings

Freezing in my finger tips

 

I am writing this to myself

Five days left for equinox

 

In the lonely winter of my solitude

I grew you with feverish patience

in the water then I ripped your cocoon of flesh

I buried the sleep with umbilical cord

Do you hear the last song of the red swan

Leaking from its cracks in every midmorning

 

I am writing this to autumn

Five days left for equinox

 

I took a shelter at the rear window of isolation

Cold as dew flowing from lands of clouds

Pale as yellow shadow fell on green

I am weirder than this weird plant leaning to the window

Time of blue verses on my marble face

Cover, let me get lost on your twosome throne

 

I am writing this to you

Five days left for equinox

 

I told the angel coming down on top of the castle

Rafaello, give me a pair of wings

 

He gave me and I added it on your back

I blow eternity into your soul

Tiber flowed away inside of me once more

I got it yours is vertigo of turtledove…

 

Translate: Ümit Şener Ta

 

NEVIN KOÇOĞLU

 

NEVIN KOÇOĞLU is a Turkish poet, journalist, environmentalist and human rights activist. Born in Gaziantep, she lived in Istanbul during her childhood years and moved, when she was an adult, to the Turkish capital Ankara where she currently lives.  She completed a B.Sc. degree in Public Administration at Anadolu University in Turkey and is studying at the same university for a second degree in Sociology. Koçoğlu’s poems are translated into Arabic, English, French, German, Italian, Kurdish, Persian, Serbian and Spanish. She is the winner of Vahittin Bozgeyik Poetry Award, 2012. She participated in poetry festivals in Turkey and number of other countries where she read her poems. She has many contributions to various international anthologies. Her poems are published in a large number of prestigious literary journals and magazines. Koçoğlu is actively campaigning to build village libraries in all the regions of Turkey,