SENNUR SEZER
(1943)

WAR SEPARATES NOT LOVERS

Only a step away from bullets blind
At the shivering tip of my cigarette
I relish your kiss like a knife

Pebbles were shy
Of our madness fervently in love
The dawn was a vast cry
The sea nearly afire
A steel whetted to the utmost
Now the day we recall loving
Our kisses are cold - keen
Like a delicate pain "the wedding"

From your hands only a step away
Only a step away from bullets blind
I relish your kiss like a knife

Translated by Nebile Direkcigil

AILING
I
Loving hard is easy. To stand on the gallows and
to swear,

Suffering grows, doesn't get less! Women always keep
after their children barefooted. Women at
windows. To write all the cheap complaints.
But the way out...

Night grows in the palms of beggars. Sweaty palms of
youths with fresh mustaches. Their blushing
bashful age gets old with a smile.
Smiles never age.

And it's as if someone gets born somewhere
in the nightf

II

A human first loves himself. Sketches his hands
and eyes on a rock. To write of his love he places
three branches and gets stoned.

What we craft is a great song. Each melody has lasted
a hundred years. Its end is a tale. What we
craft is a great song if only it could last
long after us...

It was I who first put the three branches into the void,

Translated by Talat S. Halman

 

Sennur Sezer was born in Eskişehir in 1943 and after leaving high school she started to work in the Taşkızak Shipyard. In 1965 she became a proofreader for the literary magazine Varlık. She currently writes mainly for the daily Evrensel and the periodical Evrensel Kültür, and for various other newspapers and magazines. She also prepares documentary narrations. Her first poem was published in 1958, and her first novel entitled Gecekondu/Shanty Town was published in 1964. In 1980 she received the Kadınların Sesi/Women’s Voice Magazine’s Award, in 1987 her work entitled Bu Resimde Kimler Var/Who is in this Picture won the Halil Kocagoz Poetry Award, and in 1998 she won the Pir Sultan Abdal Society Literature Award. In 2000 she received the “2000 Year’s Poet Experts” award along with names like Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca and Sunay Akın. With her work entitled Kirlenmiş Kağıtlar/Stained Sheets she won the 2000 Yunus Nadi Poem Award.