Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca

de Poems of the Mediterranean.

You say
Stars
Will touch our hands
In an endless growth.

You say
Darkness
is bright for lovers
Because it keeps quiet.

You say
I can't go to sleep.
We are alone,
And the night is blue.

~   ~

You, sea-sky,
If you stop a moment in sleep,
Seaweeds grow against the night.

Dead men become restless
If you lean a moment on the dark,
You, sea-sky.

~   ~

I plunge into the horizon,
For what I live
Is what I can recall.

Between Rome and Carthage
Floats, love by love,
Istanbul.

A bird splits my thoughts
From the blue.
My drink remains unfinished.

~  ~

The globe was calm
With only the Mediterranean on it.
On the Mediterranean,
Just the two of us.

I said, "Do you love me?"
She closed her eyes to the horizons.
"Just the moment to ask," she smiled,
"Just the place to ask."

~   ~

You had heard
This song
In the old days too.

The song evokes in the wind
From green
The quiet weeds on the bottom of galleons.

In the Mediterranean's waves and in this song
You are alive, sparkling,
And somehow you don't exist.

~   ~

Think hard; this is all of our living.


~   ~

Mustafa Esirkuş.