In the spirit of gratitude to the masters who have gone before us, and in the hope of helping to inject a moment of calm and reflection into a world that desperately needs something, I present two poems by Turgut Uyar, one of the greatest poets. who once wrote in Turkish.

ONE DAY, EARLY IN THE MORNING’

by Turgut Uyar

Let’s say I knock on your door early in the morning,

And wake you up:

That is, the fog has not yet lifted from the Golden Horn.

The ferries are blowing their horns

It’s still the early hours of dawn

The bridge would still be up.

If I knock on your door one day early in the morning…

Let’s just say my journey has taken me a while

The train has crossed iron bridges at night.

Villages high in the mountains with five or ten houses,

Telegraph poles along the route

They were running to keep up with us.

Say I bleed songs out the window

Say I keep falling asleep and waking up again

My ticket was third class,

So much for poverty.

Let’s just say I can’t afford that seafoam necklace,

So I bought you an apple from Sapanca.

“Haydarpasa here I come”, that’s how I arrived

The ferry shining on the dock,

A bit of a chill in the air,

The sea smelling of tar and fish

Let’s say I crossed to the other side with a rowboat from the bridge

With a single breath I climbed our hill…

If I knock on your door at dawn one morning

“Who?” you would ask sleepily from the other side

Your hair messed up, still feeling dazed

God knows how beautiful you would look my love,

If I knock on your door early one morning,

and wake you up from your dream,

That is, the fog has not yet lifted from the Golden Horn.

The factory whistles are blowing.

—

(translated from Turkish by Ugur Akinci)

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PER THOUSANDS

by Turgut Uyar

Thousands of Mondays have passed in my life

what it was, i can’t say

I just remember eating a cherry with a worm in it.

That means it’s pretty old.

And also all the things that don’t make sense

The lower part of a girl’s knee, for example.

And the ugly way a guy was smoking a cigarette

How to live in this world under guardianship

How crazy do they put up with this and how

It’s none of my business to find out anyone’s lineage.

Shaping my own story is enough for me

A beautiful evening

While remembering a beautiful old afternoon

Then things filled to the brim

like the jugs of water

my insides are full

This should have an end, I say

But the end of what?

To these stone steps at least

—

(translated from Turkish by Ugur Akinci)

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