Bu blog, Hilal Karahan'ın İngilizce'ye çevrilmiş şiirlerinden oluşmaktadır. Çevirileri M. S. Vural, E. Açıkalın ve Hilal Karahan'ın kendisi (büyük kısmını) yapmıştır. Çeviri çalışmaları halen devam etmektedir. Hilal Karahan'ın şiirinin kolaj yapısı çeviriye müsait olmadığından ve seste-anlamda sıçrama, dize yapısında kırılma, çağrışım zenginliği, içsesler gibi şiirin "çekirge sevişmeleri" çeviriyi güçleştirmektedir. Hilal Karahan genellikle şiirdeki farklı sesler için farklı yazı tipleri kullanır. Bu sık karşılaşılmayan şiir kurgusu belki Türk Edebiyatı'nda zaman içinde bir tür öncü olabilir. (Her türlü hakkı saklıdır. Hiçbir şekilde şairinin izni, ismi olmaksızın ve kaynak belirtilmeden alıntılanamaz, kullanılamaz. Aksi türde kullanımı halinde yasal yaptırım uygulanacaktır.)
This blog is composed of the poems which are translated to English by M. S. Vural, E. Açıkalın and Hilal Karahan (mostly) herself. Translation is still going on. It is very hard to translate her poems, due to the skipping in sound and meaning, the breaking in the sentences, evocations, inner sounds and the collage structure. She usually uses different types of letters in different sounds. It is a very unusual type of poetry structure which might be a pioneer in time for Turkish literature. (All rights reserved. None of the poems can be quoted without permission, citation and using the name of the poet.)
FIVE THEORIES ON
LONELINESS-FREEDOM SPIRAL
1/
tested by freedom
is doomed to loneliness
2/
thought history is a struggle
to solve freedom
from the knot of loneliness
3/
human, alone state of matter
among skin and colour is loneliness
kept in the eyes to hide into childhood
4/
freedom
is the lord of free
5/
our brick is loneliness
life is a mason
freedom is grouting our wall
"IN FRONT OF THE HILL"
THE KISS
1/
mouth is a drop of water
tongue is a sponge
2/
i bended to kiss the bole of a plane tree
he loudly lowered his eyes
two knots, life is untied
his trace in my mouth
is a plowed ground
carrying my sound as a conclusion
"SELF DICTIONARY-SUMMARY OF ONE DAY"
SUMMER RAIN
looking for a place to go back
became a stranger wherever it went
an umbrella left in the train
few words spoken to side seat
yet it didn’t know wherever to go
carrying itself within
the harbours sulked so much that
eyes burnt by the fire
of the fairy tales it believed
looking for a place to go back
real journeys were returnings
yet it didn’t know that it was to seek
and go overflowing boundaries
it had to rush to collect its hands
time was moving
it was an illusion, a pouring
body to obscure the meaning
yet it knew that to be understood
was the most dangerous thing
holding its heart in the hand
"IN FRONT OF THE HILL"
CORNERS OF WATER
i missed you even before leaving
a polite verdict was your absence
from my temples stones breaking
at balcony rope the day swinging
a strong sense would fall down
furiously looking for your hands
i loved you at first night we met
your quiteness, my drunkenness
and our shadows, sitting altogether
with grace of a ropewalker
time to time breaking roses
from a chessboard
inclined to loneliness
between your skin and face
a harbour pressed
if time of love was written
could be a place or an object
silence was a sharp expression
as if praying
a huge plane tree
grew on the grave land
the sole virtue of the pain was discipline
i collected dead seahorses in the corners of water
"IN FRONT OF THE HILL"
THE WALK
it was nearly night, the old house walked along its face.
due to tiredness, the hidden, raging grass looked down on its power
near the path. foreigners enter each city through the same gate.
yet the sea has making her hair, is this thunderous, full sky
that threw the vessels of the moon into the water? leaving the oily,
unclear senses on the surface, a sessile pain went down alone
in the solution of time and place... still there was time,
heard by anyone, walked slowly and secretly a ‘who is’ meaning
swinging on the cornice to the temples of the head.
the sand clock has forgotten kindly the moments
of ‘i have been loving you’: a recently washed up morning,
an evening of ‘still early please don’t go’. the breath of women
whose husbands returned to the city has getting cool carefully:
making love left half in the plate, rusted lip prints, wet, worn painfully
large sweeter, putting out salem light cigarette on an attention,
the crack in the pot has hidden the fugitive glance with respect to
fingertips to kiss: belonging to a family placed a safe and responsible
space under the lash; as it is noticed,
the hands of the concealed passion
are laid with naphthaline on the drawers.
did this broken wind touch the window?
blood stains in the hallway.
"SECRET AND MIST"
DEATH ENTRANCE
“show me your pain. the god won’t come again.”
if it was a cold sunday morning, what they look for
was a coffee smelling kitchen exactly.
the man was standing, drawing a dark,
muddy voice from its well hardly:
"strange, people get used to pain, too.”
a calm november was moving outside:
they were startled by the noise of grass, awfully
scared if a tap dripped or a grasshopper slipped.
hungry trees were cracking in the groin of the crazy wind.
she was impressed by his speech: he was speaking
as if dividing a loaf of hot bread into two:
“can there be another life with old lovers?
come on, withhold your anxiety and mislead me”
she got used to fright so couldn’t turn back.
she gathered her hair slowly:
“you were loved in your absence,
as strong as the duration of abstinence.
if you didn’t know, would you go?”
she walked around the old cities of her face
and was curious: “were those years that
we knew the beginnings from their results?
the balance was supposed to be a scale
of the hands of the clock.” smiling vaguely,
her childish teeth sparkled: “i have learned MU,
as i am going mad: time has loved the flip-flop
and pain was always heavier.”
sipping her coffee, she was uncomfortable
with posture of her wrists. she wrapped her fingers
to forehead ambitiously to feel safe again
and to have accommodation for dissociation:
“where is love in a relation, MU?
do perception rolling, sensitivity softening,
certainty sharpening occur suddenly or slowly?”
she pushed back that night of coagulation
in her blood: “the darkness was walking in the roads
of a stammering town. you were afraid of the crowd...”
the man felt cold and sat down wearing a new
self percipience. “...and touched my arm.
we were supposed to walk side by side,
instead, you were silently buried inside.
it was a time that i could rip off you from my heart,
but i was loving pain more than its space.”
putting down the cup very carefully
not to make any sound, she leaned back
with a sudden relief at the table:
“i didn’t complain about your sloughing off
or withdrawing inside so often:
the deepest loneliness grows
in the most passionate loves.
if you didn’t abandon me,
how could i learn MU,
a carved tree still lives
while the barked one dies.”
the ledge has coughed severely three times.
the reduced cloud probably didn’t love the rain.
recalling desires, the woman ogled his muscles
with her retina; it was a bare rock to remember
his open, sucking and salty mouth:
predicting pain was excruciating.
so she took a familiar face from her pillion:
“i was wrong MU to assume to be seen.
no one can see through what is misunderstood.”
if the man stared at her, she would slimily cry.
she didn’t cry: “if you loved me,
how strong i would be.”
the man was building the cornerstone of a well:
he didn’t hear, as if far away from his words:
“you have saved and collected all things,
you have been hidden and accumulated;
who were you?” putting his feet on the legs
of the chair, he adducted his knees to be at home,
and leaned forward: “recognize me,
time is later than what it seems to be:
anger has changed the dimensions.”
anxiety was a mountain village under her eyelashes.
an ivy has covered the mouth of the well with
its root and seeds. yet her tongue and teeth
are a snapdragon during kissing. he wanted
to touch her cheek with a magic of a wet sign:
he heat of his hand turned to ice: “why
do probabilities sting us, does anger sharpen
expectation? is love a test for our spirits?”
he stared at her and then outside:
"how many worlds can be in an earth?
i always brought myself wherever I came.
be disturbed by my presence.”
the tired wind has fallen down
along minced leaves. a death body
was being dragged by the ants.
the sky was going continuously.
a downpour would start.
the grass didn’t notice it.
"SECRET AND MIST"
THE POEM OF A RENTAL PENCIL
here i am the rental pencil
from writing i’ve learnt what i live
this lead chest into how niyazi sayın* has entered
biting life, my dear wife leans against my cover
in hunger i nibble each word you haven’t said
so you haven’t learnt where the fire takes you,
that your poems burn on the beach, oh really you are a poet,
who closed my mouth, nursing me with the vessels of hand
i am a traveller who is not called, never speak sleepy and awake
mind is a play of hurricanes and absents
i might be a letter or a human weepy at evening
i think every crack to be love when i fold inside
here i am the rental pencil
PS: *"Niyazi Sayın" is a famous turkish ney player.
"SECRET AND MIST"
VESPERTINE
1/
carefully patting the abdomen of time,
the silence, with warty hands,
prepares the table for the tired day
to turn into evening:
2/
pearls are poured on the fields
from recently tied waistband of the clouds --
3/
rushing all day, has the earth
stuck to the cliff to fall down
from brae to meadow,
her knees are mud, moon dust, saffron--
4/
what scoops out the alone stones
none of them can understand;
dancing grass,
stretching thicket,
or the wind smelling footprints--
"DELAYED MUMMY"
AWARENESS OF NIGHT AND LOVE
1/
most private moments of night
growing body of love
2/
a dropped odor
scents out the hints of a kiss
3/
breath carries its wind in pocket
a careless whisper rolls down
from earlobe to well of neck
skin, prepared to all states of inspiration
4/
ex lovers are tangent to
two circles crossing
matter and color of the skin
that’s why making love is so crowded
5/
human,
a snake swallowing its tail
6/
all is accepted about human
what to have
or not
night has come to such a place--
"DELAYED MUMMY"
ŞAİR POET POETİKA POETRY TURKISH POETICA
