SEZAI KARAKOC
(1933)

FIRST

You stepped off the wrong train they flitted you through the city's miror
Year in year out I watched you from the same window of longing
That fleeting escaping stark childish window
You used to greet graciously and matter of factly
The houses that kept getting smaller as they went toward the sea
You were a handful of joy in a world overflowing with joy

Spring knowledge sun color horse snorting and you
I am calling you come out from among the last virgins who are weeping
Like stone statues women come and go through the yellow rocks
Whichever one I look at you stir and whisper to me from inside
Don't stand before me move away I say it is the blindness of looking for the sultan
among concubines
The blindness that lunges toward the sun and my eyes

Are you the new moon that lights up by a hand
Every corner of yours is embossed with drawings of stags
The first river that flows on deer skin
By the reaching out of a hand
I shall cry if you vanish at the entrance to the first street
If lilacs and scorpions turn human by looking into your eyes
That means Suna that you are committing the first sin in children's paradise
Glittering seas noiseless poems closing doors are carrying the meteors to you
The first arrow tested on the wrong target
Mumbles deliriously about you

Translation by Talat Sait Halman