Leyla Işik

 

Leyla Işik

 

How Am I To Cry Now?

 

How am I to cry now?How don’t the colors of my heart get mixed with the love flowers of my orchard. By dressing your skin on my bare-naked heart, you regenerated my body. And you added one more color to my pallet. My birds flying away from my heartduring the migration season. They come back affectionately, each of them with a rose petal to dress my wound,..

 

The bridges we stretched from one loneliness to another have gone to ruin, and now there is one route between us to walk lovingly towards each other. The rivers that purge my contaminated feelings won’t flow from my eyes, and my hair is wet out of happiness. We will exchange glances with the flames of passion in my eyes.

 

You can call it pride… Or fear… Whatever you call it, I got rid of it. My offended part that lost its voice made peace with you. I can carry my heart on my shoulder and run for the sake of love. I broke loose of shackles around my legs, and I am free with you. Your smell will be on my pillow where I lean my dreams, your warmth will be in my bed, and my heart feeling cold out of loneliness will be warmed up with your love. Here I am reborn!

 

You arrived! The seasons are perplexed. I buried the dead of winter during which I cried. The calendar leaves that made me memorize your absence were always wrapped with springs, and I invited the daylight into my nights. Now the dark clouds of loneliness cannot descend on me.

 

You arrived! The words bleeding from my heart cannot appear in my poems. You are my hands, you are my eyes, and you are my tears stuck in my eyelashes. Now my part without you is not an orphan.

 

You arrived! The gates of despair are closed. You are there on my curtain, in various designs. Your smell fills in my room. You are my wind in which I flop around. Whatever I touch becomes you. The paintings on the walls turn into you and start talking.

 

You arrived! “The night won’t be embraced by the arms of your absence.” The legends of my soul won’t be silent, and they will appear in my words…

 

ENGLISH TRANSLATION BY MESUT ŞENOL

 

 

Letters To My Hope (Ii)

 

*Sitting by my window and watching the oozing lights in the evenings, I wander in the memories intoxicated with your longing… *

At just enough time to smoke a cigarette in the evening stretching towards the night,

your eyes were hanging on my eyes as they were falling down the no-name abysses.

Your cries were silent…

They were echoed in my heart.

What bled you from inside were not broken glasses, they were broken hearts.

Wasn’t every fall a state of brokenness?

I thought at that very moment:

“Should I load your heart to mine, could I carry it?

Would your sadness you settled on your face disappear?

Would you be making headway with me?

Your heart must have sensed my thought and you lit my cigarette in my fingers which was about being put out.

And the words of “every inhale amounts to a depression” were dropped from your lips.

As life passes by like a deep pain,

“Every inhale is a burnout inside life. Whether we enjoy it or not”, I said.

Your head bent down like your shoulders.

Was it the snow that turned your hair white?

But the season was not of a winter!

Two privileged lives were travelling in the time limited to smoking a cigarette.

Even though they meet at the same station from time to time.

For some time, our deprived sides were heading for different directions.

Then we were becoming again the dresses of each other’s wounds.

Again, we were cracking the doors of your hearts open.

I had loaded your heart in mine. You had loaded my heart in yours. Now we are moving forward together.

 

 

You’re Going To Understand Me

 

Outside, the night is being washed by the rain.

I feel again sad in the hours of your absence.

Like the ripples of the drops fallen on the backwater,

legends about love fall down on my heart through my more and more growing thoughts.

By echoing, they get mixed with the sound of the rain.

As if someone is passing by in front of my door, at the load of the years through the footsteps.

And as if they’re going to reopen their curtains closed to the day with their longing in close embrace,

In the emerging climates of the new seasons.

They are going to make the inside of my eyes smile with happiness.

We were the rain pouring together,

We used to hang on to each other while the rain was dropping from the eaves.

Actually weren’t we supposed to fall down on the ground together?

We were supposed to come into leaf in every new spring time.

Actually, your heart was fooled by which wind…

To which sun did you give your eyes?

And how did you darken my world?

Was believing in you my only guilt?

With your absence my bed is cold, and my left side stayed empty for years.

Tick tacks of my life are about to halt.

I long for you.

And still I hurt so bad in my heart.

Outside, the night is being purified…

Ah!

If only I can reach out to the hands of time, then I would hold them tightly.

The sun downs I am awaiting would not linger,

and the inside of my eyes would not mist over.

You are not going to collect the leftover loneliness,

and you’re going to understand me.

My despair at the cries of the seagulls flying over the seas in your absence.

You’re going to understand me!

Leyla Işık

12.10 2011 00.54 İzmir, at an hour with your absence

English Translation by Mesut Şenol

 

LEYLA IŞIK