ÖZMEN, Gonca

Confession

Don’t tell a soul that we haven’t read Derrida

That on the tips of our minds a shoe suddenly springs

That lovemaking ceases on the tips of our bodies

And that meaning forever shuffles over there, just over there

Don’t tell a soul how I changed you for a shirt

Don’t tell a soul of the soil we ate as children

Or how we turned into someone else, slept in a grave

Or how callow we were staring at the tree

For why would an ashen faced father forever slip into dreams

Don’t tell a soul, to each daughter the father is the missing threshold.

Don’t tell a soul that in you first I saw:

Just how a ferryboat grows old

The trigger that sets off morning

Our three persons burnt as we kissed

In the milk boiling over on the stove

Still don’t tell a soul of all that came before

Or nothingness will wake to steal you from my side

Translation: Neil P. Doherty

The Land of Mulberry

Come to the land of mulberry

To the remoteness of dwellings

I'll teach you quiet

And the branches' concern

I'll kiss where you're waning

Where nature wanes

Cross the plain

Come to the land of mulberry

Into the grasses

I'll make you listen to the storm

To the scream of the storm-god

A long while later

I'll wait for you again

Beyond a stream

Cross the field

Come closer come

To the mulberry scent

I'll show you the ants

Translated by Ruth Christie

Wound

-because love fell silent-

Let us go to the bottom…the bottom of the well

Where there’s darkness, quiet and the water’s fear

And depths where no word can reach

As though I’d scattered myself over a canvas

I slipped into that bitter symphony

You are a tired whimper in my voice now

-because the dream perished-

Let us go away…. far away from love

Where there’s ash, memory and the dregs of death

And the untamed silence of the mountains

Yet do not forget

Every well lives its own loneliness

Every bird

greets the morning

with its own song