Serdar Topaloğlu: I was born in Samsun on the 31st July 1997. I graduated from Kocaeli Deniz Yıldızları Anadolu Technical High School. I am continuing my studies at Ondokuz Mayıs University Health Management Department. I’ve served as a text editor at Nüsgü Literary Magazine and as editor of Babylon Poetry City Magazine. My poems have been and is contuniung to be published in such magazines and fanzines as Nüsgü, Lirik, Sin Edebiyat, Tmolos, Babylon, Edebiyat Nöbeti etc.
From Where the Poet Is Sushed
Translated with the author’s approval by Ege Dündar
I reached for my cigarette gently;
Additive to my arid lifetime.
That day I passed away my rose,
I won’t die once more…
Metin Altıok*
I.
Another leaf falls off my tree of life
I wipe your silhouette from the mirror of my eyes
Traces of your lipstick, bloodstains on my lapel, persistent pomegranate on my lips
Like castles of sand rising from seashores
My shivering, unravelled at each wave
Even ragman won’t deal my body
Neither heavy in weight / nor value!
Carried all this time in vain
My heart as though it would tear wherever I pull
II.
I asked questions, gave birth to answers
Took off the shirt you sewed
With your hair stitch by stitch
I remember well, the wind was high
Birds all above us, some scent of moss
The sea would crumble on us if we let it be
You were afraid
When it’s ferries are off duty! Istanbul gets desolate
It’s two sides as though they would coalesce wherever I pull
III.
Love: a rusty nail hammered in my brain
Words: carpenters to my body
In my veins the ebb and tides of tetanus
In my hands the pins I use to sew my eyes to syllables
The sun and the moon in two separate points, two distinct, dark silhouettes
I pass by the streets
Captivity rots in my breath
Homeros and poetry: my life’s milestone
This is why I respect the alphabets
And revere the letters
From where it’s poet is shushed! Another poem rips
Papers have spirits too
And they too burn
Ever after! my heart will tear from where you hold
*Metin Altıok (March 14, 1940 – July 9, 1993) a renown Turkish poet of Alevi faith, who – together with 34 other intellectuals and artists, mostly of Alevi descent – fell victim to the 1993 Sivas massacre.