i just wanted to peel off my clothes like a lizard
off my womanhood and geography as well
and i wanted to get lost in this cannibalistic forest
i had seen a child somewhere out there
in a truck bed covered with the filth of time
bandits were collecting pearls from the sea in your eyes
and they were crashing them like a sandy soil
under the feet coming out of shoemaker of the hell
people facing back were passing the streets
people facing back in the clean sitting rooms of the houses
they were celebrating a holiday or a birthday
yet, nobody was turning around
and nobody was seeing
the sea flowing from the child’s eyes
this red peal i am holding between my teeth
a keepsake from that day. i could not abandon. And swallow it
and i could not break it. in a red mirror pulling my face
where i cannot get lost. a burning smell and on my hands
the filth of time left from that day. the water i keep playing with
in order to disappear off the face of the earth
who informed against us?
we had just walked out of a dinner for one
the child and i are in the simple rooms of two far away locations
and we were reading the only prayer we knew:
hey human being, think of who you are
how have they decided which shoulder of ours was more predisposed
to lean to the wound of an olive tree
we are experiencing immortality
now the child and i
are in the simple rooms of two far away locations
i swallow the red pearl and by looking at the picture of a deer
on the wall and i wipe the arrow in the picture with the salt of my wound
it lies on the sea inside it by collecting the powder of smashed pearls
all prophets are late
all prophets
for dropping from the green pelerine of god
and a late arriving words
cannot illuminate the night frozen with the filth of time
everybody has already become their own god
everybody has found out the ways to forgive themselves
in the back rooms after committing murder in the front yard
that is why the red pearl being shaken in the chambers inside of me
and pearl powder piled up on its eyelashes
are of verses descended with us from the earth to god
English Translation by Mesut Şenol