ŞEREF BİLSEL

 

Gone Flower

 

Head to toe in spice, I read Attar,

a man beside me demanding a shirt from god

his soul letting in winds, he bore

within a wounded rose

the sound of calamity stalks through the house it seems,

three mouths have grown entangled, so who broke this woman,

where is the earth to turn all these words into the branches of spring?

His mouth everyone’s homeland, the yellow leaves

of consolation... head to toe in spice

I read Attar

black like

swallowed stone

are

the laments

of the east

If the rain that falls is the sky’s curse

the sailboats sunk in the past will grow thorny

who has broken all these women, weep on finding your eye

for the eye is a chasm, half green half soil

the voices of the fallen bed down on my gritty skin

I read Attar last night

God on top of me stretched out, asleep

“Dünebakan,” from Mecnun Dalı, Yitik Ülke Yayınları, 2007.

Translated by Gökçenur Ç. and Neil P. Doherty

 

Remaining

 

Everything is a burden

to the one who has no burden but words

At times you walk

towards the fields that raised you

by the verges in anguish flowers bloom

their scent swelling out the slum houses

Evening

The white horse of day cowers

into the fading forest

in a house distant a pale light

oozing from nature from history

shadow and shadow and shadow...

The world is emptied out, so we can see far off

A pomegranate in the child’s hand, in the other silence

the emptiness of those departing

fills up the eyes of those remaining

Everything is a burden

to the one who has no burden but words

At times you walk

towards the fields that raised you

look carefully

there is blood in the mother’s delight

“Kalan,” Varlık Dergisi, March 2017.

Translated by Gökçenur Ç. and Neil P.Doherty

 

 

ŞEREF BİLSEL

 

ŞEREF BİLSEL was born in Rize in 1972. He studied at the Department of Turkish Language and Literature. since the beginning of the 1990s, his poems and writings have been published in numerous magazines. Then he became the editor-in-chief of the literary magazine. He prepared annals of poetry. There are four books of poetry published: Narrations of Narrow Time (1996), Winter Season in Magma (2003), Majnun Branch (2007), Ash of the Earth (2013). In 2014, the 18th edition of Ash of the World. He was awarded the Golden Orange Poetry Prize.. his book of essays titled Solo Poetry, published in 2015, was deemed worthy of the 2016 Melih Cevdet Anday Essay Prize. in 2019, he met with the reader of his book Lonely Literature. in 2021, Introductory Lectures on Poetry were published. He writes regular articles in the asset magazine under the title ‘Among the New Poems’. Dec. His last book, The Death of Paper, will be published in 2022.