CAHIT SITKI TARANCI
(1910 - 1956)

I HAD A MAP
I had a map, a souvenir from school
With continents and seas and coloured countries.
A splendid world, I hardly know it now,
With happy men and peaceful smoking chimneys
And continents and seas and coloured countries.

And now I weep, our map is all in blood
The blood Cain shed, that never could be staunched,
Bringing a somber sameness to our world
And torment to us all.
And now I weep, our map is all in blood.

Translated by Bernard Lewis

I WANT A COUNTRY
I want a country
Let the sky be blue, the bough green, the cornfield yellow
Let it be a land of birds and flowers.

I want a country
Let there be no pain in the head, no yearning in the heart
Let there be an end to brothers' quarrels.

I want a country
Let there be no rich and poor, no you and me
On winter days let everyone have house and home.

I want a country
Let living be like loving from the heart
If there must be complaint, let it be of death.

Translated by Bernard Lewis

AFTER DEATH
With many hopes about death we perished,
But the charm was broken in a vacuum.
Our song of love we cannot help exhume,
A view of the sky, tuft of twigs, bird's plume;
Living was a habit we had cherished.

No news comes from the world now or ever;
No one misses us, no soul cares to know,
The darkness of our night is endless, so
We might just as well do without a window:
Our image has faded from the river.

Translated by Talat Sait Halman


TERROR
Gently daylight recoiled from the windowpane
Baring all the mirrors desolate and stark;
Now in the gardens the voices ofsilence reign
And the dome of the sky is a blotch of dark.

From fountains and springs water has ceased to pour
So our empty glasses may be filled no more;
Where narcissus had bloomed now a minotaur
Forbids passage to the birds that flee in vain.

Skylla is precious and so is Charybdis.
I fear the night and its dark-ridden abyss:
My trusted hills may suddenly go amiss
And beyond them dawn may never break again.

Translated by Talat Sait Halman

MAY THE DAY NEVER STRAY FROM MY WINDOW
Over daybreak I can command no control
Nor is there anyone who knows my plight.
The thought of death clutches my soul,
Then this bird, this garden, this light.

And to its great God the heart says:
'I have no fear of the pain you bestow;
I accept every torture so long as
The day may never stray from my window.'

Translated by Talat Sait Halman

Cahit Sıtkı Tarancı (born on October 4, 1910 – October 13, 1956) was a well known Turkish poet and author. Tarancı was born in Diyarbakır, Ottoman Empire in 1910. He finished his secondary education in St. Joseph High School, then graduated from Galatasaray Lisesi in Istanbul. After Tarancı finished high school, he continued his education in the School of Political Sciences in Istanbul between the years 1931 and 1935. Then he left for Paris, France for a university degree and studied in the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris, but he had to return to Turkey without completing his education in the wake of World War II in 1940.