The Poetryzine magazine presents the selected poems by the Turkish poet Metin Cengiz
Purple Silence
Tumble into love’s wide temple
Into the soft foam of language tumble
And be born again among red lights
Dive into babbling moonlight
Into the phosphorous of moonlight falling on sound
And like rain dressed in blue
Stretch out to what you have yet to live
There, where the call of desire grows greater
On your journey goes, leap into the arms of the dark
Speaking, looking, everything that makes us us
Let it stay in the folds of deep memory
Purple silence, the rhymes in our breath
The river that flows in spate between us
And the soft tiredness we reach for
After pleasures that steal in before morning
Let them meet on the breast of evening
Like two converging diverging roads.
In that blooming emptiness of ego
Find yourself, lose yourself
All you have lived & have yet to live
Your struggles, your loves
Let them mingle with those eternal waves
That like a morning of memory flow in fountains.
(Translated to English by Neil Patrick Doherty)
An apocalyptic chain of melody
In my destiny I'm an unimaginably huge wound My face sucks in blood as i wipe it with my handkerchief As my voice scatters in the wind like that of the fall My letters intermingle with the pollen
Letters are the alchemy of defying the world In songs left unfinished They're like an ever-changing malignant tumor They're that stagnant water which chums In my oversized universe that won't fit into books: Like a lilac stain They seem to leave a trace in the night
So, with a new cause the dawn is breaking Filled with the cries of leaves gone berserk And as i thus keep pouring my venom on my wound The sentences turn into an apocalyptic chain of melody Let the sun fall on my forehead, my sweat turn cold At this most challenging point of my epileptic anguish
No, my love, i will not spell out this song for you With its aroma discarded, metamorphosed in riots I've long since stamped my seal Put down my clumsy signature On the most challenging part of life And at every sunrise I've brushed my teeth Pressing life hard into my flesh
-Come on, pick up that comb that adores poems And start the day combing your hair
(Translated by Suat Karantay )
At times
Sometimes someone comes
Settles down in my heart
Surrounding my whole body
The iron protecting me melts
Utters words I've never heard
Telling me about myself
Whisks me far away
Upsetting my world
No, this isn't the only thing i want to explain
This is someone else or you perhaps
But i understand in the end
I'm the traveler of myself
(Translated by Pınar Besen)
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