Poems by Leyla IŞIK
I’VE HUNG
Time was my journey through the time tunnel,
The plural men of my solitudes whose names I didn’t know
Deemed themselves existent through the identities
That day put on my nakedness
Whereas Iwas NON-EXISTENT.
I’m (was) Neither my mother’s little girl,
Nor my father’s princess,
Nor my first man’s soul,
Nor the men’s women who are nothing to me.
I’ve hung them,
Now are being questioned in the branches of life
My denied identities,
The contradictions stuck on me
And
Time.
AH ASYA (I)
While swinging from one side to the other,
anchored in the darkness of the night, her naked body would make love to the drunk time.
Rough horsemen would ride on her vast hills,
as if they had triumphed from first to last. . .
After every triumph, in her big almond eyes her rains would well up into the bitter of blue
with her black destiny,
And every spring, Asya’s branches would come into bloom
With the purple bunches blooming for bitter in nooks.
She wouldn’t see the wounded seagulls flying to their freedom.
Her locked lips would keep silent towards inside of her.
She would keep silent to the oceans all around.
Whereas Asya. . .
was a continent fully stretched out to love.
Translated by Baki Yiğit
