Forest And Garden

Ali CENGİZKAN

FOREST AND GARDEN

In mid-life as I awake in a dark forest, lost chances, regrets, the joy of skies unexplored, air particles with traces of my wings, they all they all, like pebbles on my back finding themselves a place and trying to settle better, like traces hurrying to fill up voids ad extra spaces, everything that is the picture of endurance like the soot under the kettle, the embers I kick, the ash smearing my foot, there, they all they all, everything that belongs to today and yesterday and tomorrow and to the self, say, one should be on his way.
In mid-life as I awake in a dark forest, questions, like why didn't we meet before, why does a friendship sometimes start hopelessly like separations beginning before even uniting and like the first tiny leaf of a sapling in a dry forest, why does the fire of regret befall in the very last moment, why does the fire of regret wee feel for the immense compromises we make in return for small gains burn the forest helplessly, why are your eyes that shine like two pieces of diamond in my palm, those eyes I'm afraid to touch, those eyes that can endure forest fires so distant, and why oh why are your shining eyes turning into a question now?

A garden, however, like prose, prose forever in need of editing, whose words die out, which fertilizes its own soil, places its commas awkwardly, waters itself under the noon sun always conceives its fruit in the winter, a garden like prose which bears its unwanted fruit in the winter, with which women always fall in love, with which women always fall in love but where men feel regret and are lonely, consoles itself digging and writing.

At this hour of waking with the hardness of pebbles on my back, let reason play its drums, common sense blow its flute and hit its cymbals, thoughtlessness break its pen and seating its brother torture next to it let it kindle the fire of love: Kiss honor on the forehead and on the petal and make destiny, dragging its beard along, piss off the road cleaning the lust of the asphalt.

In mid-life as I awake in a dark forest, oh god there is so much light to be trodden, so many saplings to plant, so much death to be witnessed.

Translated by Suat Karantay