My gratitude goes to Ahmet Murat and
the book “One Poet Riding a Bike”
for making me write this poem…
You are saying the trees are having a laugh after you
fine, well then you have a bike.
Laughing of the trees and riding the bike
happen to be nice habits like singing a chant,
there is a reserved poem of yours to write about these.
To me, you are born yesterday
and if it is up to you, I do not know what I say,
let it be so, I think something like that has got a bike,
more laughter, more trees, and there should be even more
Apparently for the first time, it was not the case
that I watched a nature documentary, when I started
seeing my longest documentary, I was pushing forty
even though I don’t watch that documentary
for fifteen years, it is still shown, and it is
about the migration of the animals in Africa,
how much tears I shed in those years abruptly
Africa’s head ascended high, and its rain reached the land
as if the songs came into my heart, not into my ears
I know those green songs were Africa’s gift,
You know well, Africa’s songs are yellow,
yellow of faith, yellow of the blacks and
by no means the songs burst open like the youth of a tree
The rain falls not on Africa but on its soul
and its drops turn green, Senegal, Mauritania
Mali, Kenya, Nigeria, and what’s more, born yesterday
drives his bike towards the old maps and always a sound,
he rests his ear on Africa’s map as a big sound… It
seems like I cried for you previously
besides my eyes kind of were not then filled like they are at the moment
you know humans weep like a forest or like a mountain
whether you call it a dark woodland or a burnt mountain
my wounds got worsened, and I am all tears inside and out
what is the use if I shed those tears now, for Chad, Sudan and Somalia?
We are the ones who lost old tears and the ones of new non survivors,
hey you, the folks with their songs out of words!
Human, as I call it, he weeps so deep like an ocean,
sobbing like Mount Ararat, and sometimes from it,
storms blow and wreak havoc in places and hills
supposing everybody cries like Asia for instance,
in old times wisdom was dripping from the tears of the Orient,
the white would have waited for the “Weeping Feast” of the East
just in case wisdom might drop into their eyes out of this pleasure
as such if only Africa cries now from its tears and salt
if only it washes and rinses itself, and new white world becomes purified
… But it is not the case for the born yesterday, poetry or Africa
and I think they are also the oldest kids in the world
and even though we might have forgotten, they are considered
to be the yesterday of the globe, child peoples you want to have them milk
remind you of it through its sound; trees, bikers, walkers and poets do not forget
because both poetry and Africa have their pride like a baobab tree does
deliberately vigorous, purposely high, stubbornly slow, and willfully black!
Translated by Mesut Şenol