Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar

SHIP THAT IS ASLEEP AT THE PIER

Ship that is asleep at the pier
Do you remember the ocean,
The rough waves, the seaweed
And the roaring of the seas?

Let infinity call us
At the morning hour one day.
Let the ship raise its anchor at once,
Let a beautiful journey start.

Like the weathered sails
We would be alone with the ocean,
In the coolness of the dawn
We would go to sleep.

Ship that is asleep at the pier
Do you remember the ocean,
Those who left and never came back,
And the ones who are waiting in vain?

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EVERYTHING IS JUST RIGHT

Everything is just right: the cypress tree by the pool,
Far away a water wheel moans at every turn;
Objects seem to be reflected from an enchanted sleep
Climbing vines and insect whirrings surround the house.

Everything is just right: the table, the jug and the glass.
In the light filtering through the branches
Time glances like a magic gazelle,
Silence is falling on the ground leaf by leaf.

I know you are asleep in the shade
That is deep and cool like a seaside cave;
Your eyelashes are tightly closed in a world of joy,
A smile on your face in this laden afternoon.

Perhaps these freshly opened roses are your dreams;
This tender light on top of the branches,
This eternal love song in the cooing of the pigeons…
Since our life’s dream has passed into things.

Everything is just right; far away a water wheel
Moans at every turn like a tormented soul;
It may be remembering something of our adventure…
Dry autumn leaves are strewn in the wind.

Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar em Bűtűn Şiirleri.
e mini introdução a Tanpinar, aqui.
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BEYOND TIME

I am
not within time,
nor entirely beyond;
but in the flux
of an all-embracing, complete, indivisible moment.

All forms in a trance
of strange dream-tones,
even a windblown feather
is not as light as I.

My head a vast mill,
grinding out silence;
my heart a dervish
naked of cloak or goatskin,
who has reached his desire.

I perceive
the world become
a creeping ivy, rooted in me;
I swim at the centre
of a deep blue light.


ONE DAY IN ICADIYE

One day in Sultantepe or Icadiye
a melody takes wing
and suddenly where you are
a universe opens,
enchanted, endless, free.
Washed in the wind of today
the rose of the past one by one scatters its leaves
in the well of your dreams.
Now you'll look with a different eye
on the sleep you call 'life'.

Perhaps the strangest legends you have heard,
the dawn-kingdom in the branchy woods,
old stoic pines alone on every skyline,
evenings that leak away like secrets from your life.
yearly advent of hawthorn and chestnut.
and in their crumbling graves the dreaming dead
-all will be bom again
to the love you thought dead;
and you'll know the only death
is the passing of time.

("Istanbul ne represéntait rien d'autre qu'une cité à conquérir et que lorsqu'ils la contemplaient le soir, du haut des collines de Sultantepe ou de Çamlica, ils songeaient aux trésors des Césars d'Orient que tôt ou tard ils se partageraient." Tanpinar em Cinq Villes)
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and more, here.