Sometimes a human heals through the threat of the macrocosm
hours melt away as hastily as salt
I am going to those places, to fiery lands I do not know
I am following behind with the trace of frozen blood on my forehead
heavy are the fingernails I dug into my heart
‘that’s just how the deaf and mute are’ pain
with dramatic effects I am heading toward doomsday
I am a pleased coffin with this pain
I was ice in the trees
willingly I dipped into poison my voice that sang like theatrical birds
hours were fierce, minutes inviting unto death
whoever follows after me burns with the whistle I forgot in my mouth
Greetings Yesenin, greetings Pavese, my golden
children
we left the dirty door of the suicide-black house to the wind
as a remedy, through the threat of the macrocosm
it burned, it burned and what came of it, our pain as deep as sinkholes
rotted are the fingernails we dug into our hearts
The earth passed by with dark
crowds
laden clouds hastily washed the hours I touched
one by one my stars turned to ash in that hot place I do not know
my heroism to fertilize the cosmos lasted until flying
in the bell jar, Nilgün
early risers, my firebirds departed with a malady of tongue
How much of a pomegranate you are
they used to say you were born a pomegranate
who is fire
what is water
what is the pomegranate
which society
which woman, Nilgün
a home that stands as an example of ‘joy neighboring with pain’
my golden child: can this world not be arrested
or sent off to be cleansed
if dying is an art, it is a poem hanging
on the pomegranate branch, my child
perhaps life and death will be rewritten with its pure white signature
‘when I close my eyes’, ‘typed-out poems’ remain, Nilgün
English Translation by Mesut Şenol