FAZIL HUSNU DAGLARCA

GRAVE QUESTION

The west wind soared high as the mountains
Spreading
Silence All over the earth
Why say the dead shiver?
Have you ever slept the sleep of death?

In the forest syllable by syllable
Leaves gave you the mighty darkness.
Your body stood Night by night beyond beauty.
Why say dreams are white?
Have you ever slept the sleep of death?

Shadows grew into the winds.
Brooks
And birds scuttled through your land.
Desolate lay the village road. Why say your loved ones are gone?
Have you ever slept the sleep of death?

Translated by Talat Sait Halman

RETURN

Soldiers are returning, aged soldiers
From the blue hills of peace.
How intimate within our hearts
What their steps would not release...

Songs are returning, songs of light
Sung on hulky ox-carts.
Are the gardens across a mirror
Some new destiny that starts?
Birds are returning, loyal birds,
For our eaves, not for the sake of spring.
We come alive in the whirling distance
And the beauty that the seasons bring.

Ships are retuming, strange and opulent,
Sailing the strange and endless seas.
In the depths, like beams of light,
The cargo of the ships tarries.
Unlike any of these, my night,
You, you are retuming into my hands.
I am returning to love and life
From all the dead of all the lands.

Translated By Talat Sait Halman

Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca (1915 - 2008) was born in Istanbul and completed his primary education in different parts of Anatolia. He graduated from Kuleli Military High School in 1933. In 1950 he resigned from the army to devote himself to poetry. He worked for several government offices and retired in 1959. He opened the Kitap Publishing House in Istanbul and published the journal entitled Türkçe from 1960 to 1964. He closed his publishing house in 1970. He has written more than one hundred books, including more than twenty books for children, and children are a continual theme in his works. His fame rests on the poetry collections published between 1940 and 1968. He also wrote politically motivated books like Hiroşima/Hiroshima (1970). In 1974 Dağlarca received Yugoslavia’s Golden Wreath Award and in 1977 he was named Poet of the Year at the Rotterdam Poetry Festival. A panel of distinguished Turkish men of letters honored him as Turkey’s leading living poet in 1976. Dağlarca is one of the most widely translated Turkish poets of our time.