TURGAY FİŞEKÇİ
(1956)
TENTS
We are equal when drinking water
We are equal in needing bread
Bread ond water
The irreplaceables for man
The teacher in whose classes
One is tested by fire
Love
The irreelaceable for man
It is there when we are
Not there when we are not
Virtue
The irreploceoble for mon
The most desired
The most distant dream
Peace
The irreplaceoble for mon
It leaves with one action
With another action it perishes
Earth
The irreplaceable for mon
Translated by Dilek Yazici
CONFESSlONS ON A BlRTHDAY
They spill out of the whites of your eyes into the streets
Children going to work each morning
They slide down joyously from the curls of your hair
Their cries mix in the boulevards of the town
lnto the rustling of the leaves poisoned by exhaust gases
You wait under those leaves
In your hair children's mouths, melons, and cherries
The best coincidence life can offer me.
--My life is a skein of wool
And each of my legs a knitting needle
Making a stitch at each step--
When I come up to you I come closer to the
World Their best notes are distilled
When I touch the keys of your eyelashes, The art I find in your face
--My oldest friend-
Like someone I have never met before
Constantly surprises me
The food gets more delicious
If the light shining in your face is reflected on it
Children play in the whites of your eyes
Like cats purring and purring
Rock rock is the sound a child makes seeing love for the first time
It descends upon his bed in the evening.
Rains wash down the whole night
Your eyes the largest square of the town
In the morning it is the fog in your face
That ties my boat to your bed
The traffic gets jammed in the streets
While my lips cannot part with the curve in your arm.
This is how so many years have passed, maybe more will
Getting used to a person. like one would to tea, music, and a film
For a feeling to make room for itself between two individuals.
It is a nest set up in the void
With sticks and branches carried into it
From turkeys stuffed with chestnuts at the New Years'
And from vigilant hospital rooms
From seasides, from books
In which the egg of life is tended.
Inside one like a fussy mother
The wish to sweep it away thinking it is a heap of dust.
This is how so many years have passed, maybe more will
With whatever we carried into that nest built in the void
Our sufferings and longings
Our past and future.
Translated by Yurdanur Salman
Turgay Fişekçi (1956, Balıkesir) finished his elementary through high school education in Balıkesir. He graduated from the Faculty of Law at Istanbul University. He was the editor-in-chief of the journal Sanat Emeği (1978-80) and vice editor-in-chief of the journal Adam Sanat (1986-2000). He published the journal Sözcükler (2006), prepared anthologies, and now writes a column in the Cumhuriyet newspaper. His first poem, “Dayanılmayan”/“Intolerable” was published in the journal Türkiye Yazıları (1977). He has published poetry in journals such as Yazko Edebiyat, Varlık, Gösteri and Üç Çiçek. He writes plain, clear poems that are rich in their yearning for nature and has recently moved toward narrative poetry. He writes lyrical poems that can be summarized as stories. His books of poetry: Karda Işıltılar/Glitterings in the Snow (1981), Kuşkuluyum Yaşadığımdan/I Doubt that I Live (1983), Yitik Bahar/Lost Spring (1989), Dip Sevgi/Deep Love (1994), Sevgi Bağları/Love Connections (1998), Kumral Gökkuşağı/Auburn Rainbow (2002), Ay Çiçeği Özlemi/Yearning for Sunflowers (2003) and İnsan Üstüne Sorular Yanıtlar/Questions and Answers on Man (Collected Poems, 2006).