An Evening Song For The Private With No Leave

Egemen BERKÖZ

AN EVENING SONG FOR THE PRIVATE WITH NO LEAVE

How come this town -
and it's no small Anatolian town, either -
how come this town puts me in an Oriental mood...

I have the evening brought to Çınaraltı
to transform me in its own magic
into sorrow. How is it, I sigh, how is it that
the evening comes upon the town all of a sudden,
slipping around the street lights,
all the way from Laleli... right to my heart.
How is it possible...

I sit and wait, the knife
hides its sharp edge
I hide. I am the secret eagle
of the mountain. The mountain. Secret.
I proclaim love to all women, my love.
To the prostitutes walking the Beyazıt area
and to those of Galata, silently going to bed.
I proclaim love.
Also to the wild tulip, breaking through the arid ground at some point.
My love.
I sit and wait. The knife.
Its sharp edge.

How come this town
always sends me to another
from its big gloomy train station...
It makes me pass through bulletproof nights
to a motorboat hauling sand from a remote pier
with a letter from my village in my pocket
and a wild tulip
in the upper brace of my rifle...
It makes me pass through bulletproof nights
like a horse carriage running away from the sea.
The pregnant wife of the shepherd who goes into the military is
love, sometimes I cry even
in the evening.

How come this town -
and it's no small Anatolian town, either -
how come this town puts me in an Oriental mood...
ın a deserted tramway station...
Into the Dolmabahçe Palace...Into a poem memorized
and forgotten.
When it's the kind of town that embroiders dreams
and in the evening, like a fly hidden in my coat collar,
flies away.
Even in the evening...

Translated by Tanses Gülsoy