bejan mitur

When the Wheat is Cut

Of your leaving a home at night
Of caressing its pillar
Of your speaking
That night I was turning around you.
The hand that caresses the wheat remembers.
Circling you
A name uttered from a mouth.
Names carry memory.
Childhood is not just about lying side by side
That’s not how it is.
y burden belongs to me
Like the shower of rain now falling
On Istanbul, rain falling on that moment
And your sleeping there.
In a sleep like the world you’re tied to.
You covered me up and departed
To become prey for wolves in the snow
And the night.

A deep blue light
Rain now over the straits.
A poet speaks of hands
Of the poetry your hands knew
Your hand that understood
A pillar
A dark house.
Circling with you is the cosmos
Whispers of being.
When the wheat is cut
What will appear from now on
Is not loneliness
But the daily bread that falls to our lot.


trans by ruth christie and selçuk berilgen