BEHCET NECATIGIL
(1916 - 1979)

BARBAROS SQUARE

I know it's rude and shameless,
but I follow
mother and daughter
when they take a stroll.

The girl unobtrusively
walks a step ahead;
perhaps she's embarrassed
by her mother's shawl.

In Besiktas, Barbaros Square,
a monument on its right
a tomb on its left,
and the centre a square,
is the park of the poor,
especially in summer.

Hewn stones lie about
among saplings and tombs,
benches here and there,
and sitting in rows
people fill the square.
Ah, a young girl's heart
must surely look.

The rest is sea-front,
beached caiques,
a quayside cafe,
lights shed on the water
and Uskudar over there.

The mother, exhausted,
sinks to the humid earth,
but keeps her eye
on her daughter standing
While records play their loudest songs,
they sit on
and gaze at the sea.
The young are in need of fun,
Oh girl with the aging mother,
Oh cool breeze from seas!

THE WAGER

It looks like
Our wager will take some time

Leaving work and occupation
I moved to a house facing the cemetery

Death you can not cheat me
The wager is still on

 

ETERNAL HOUSE

When they are his age
Their mind spills into the world outside,
They do not look at me,
Day and night their eyes roam the streets.

Even a strand of hair would weigh
Heavier than me in their sight.
Let it be so, I can wait
Whether the waiting be short or long.

Sons have left me, daughters too
But only for a short time.
Let them, I say, they're young,
Let them enjoy the endless streets.

I too have tried that very often. But I know
They can't do without me, they'll come back.
And I am big. I am the House,
I forgive.

Translated by Feyyaz Kayacan

 

Behçet Necatigil (b. April 16, 1916 – December 13, 1979) was a leading Turkish author and poet. Poet of the modern turkish literature, born in İstanbul. In the year 1940, he graduated from the Turkish Language and Literature Department of the University of Istanbul. Between the years 1940 and 1943 he worked as a teacher in Kars and Zonguldak. After completing the military service in 1945, he was appointed to the school he was graduated from, Istanbul Kabataş Highschool as a literature teacher. After working for 15 years in this school, he was appointed to the Istanbul Education Institute in 1960 and worked there as a literature teacher until his retirement in 1972. To improve his German which he started learning in the secondary school, he got into the Istanbul University German Philology as a guest student during his studies and went to Germany for three months with scholarship given by a student exchange program in the summer of 1937. He continued on translating from German and never lost his interest in the German literature and language his whole life. Necatigil's first poem was published in the Varlık magazine during his education. (October 1935). In the Lexicon of the names in Turkish Literature, Necatigil describes himself as following: He spent his forty years in poetry trying to remind the situations which a middle-class man face from birth to death as an individual and also to deliver his real and imaginary lives in the context of house-family-environment triangle. Sometimes he was criticized because of his outline modernizations but still he was cited as a poet who has a consistent and private world by the critics.Necatigil was honoured by two Poetry Awards in Turkey (Yeditepe Poetry Award, 1957 and Turkish Language Association Poetry Award, 1964). Necatigil poetry award created by his family after his death, is given since 1980.