TURAN KOC
(1952)
RECORD
look youth is not repeatable
what we carry on our shoulders is our burial ground
there are children who cry on our doorsteps
by invitation we are prone to deadends
after all the doings all the sayings
our women will have to make do
with a flower-spoken precipice
FULL DAY
how would I know
the centre of a poem, the heart of a loaf,
the taste of calm weathers in my mouth,
how would I know
how many springs, Row many pictures
I have in my pocket?
this afternoon is humming in me,
your eyes are huge, shadowy.
walk, let the streets stretch
walk, let your motherhood increase.
something light, something airy rises in me.
how would I know whether it's love or helplessness?
Translated by Mevlut Ceylan
Turan Koç was born in 1952 in Kayseri and is Professor of Philosophy of Religion at the Faculty of Divinity at Erciyes University. His research interests include Islamic aesthetics, the philosophy of religious language, the language of poetry, and the philosophy of mind. In addition to The Body-Mind Relationship with Special Reference to Immortality (1991), Religious Language (1998) and Islamic Aesthetics (2008), he has penned three poetry books, and also translations from Arabic, Persian, and English such as Dimensions of Existing, Sufism and The Vision of Islam (Chittick); Islam and Christianity Today and Islamic Fundamentalism and Modernity (Watt); Philosophy of Mind (Shaffer); An Introduction to the Medieval Islamic Philosophy (Leaman); Art of Islam: Language and Meaning (Burckhardt); Mukaddemât (el-Qaysarî, with S. Sevim and H. Țahin); Mishqâtu`l-Anwâr (Ghazali, with Seyfullah Sevim) and Sevânihul-Uțțâk (Ahmed Ghazâlî, with M. Çetinkaya).