TE16 Turkish Delight

Ten Poems

To the severed veins of my heart in clumsy waters Surrounded by fog, with fortune-telling eyes piercing And wild, with your restless mastery Tried, with my shyness chilled, as a timid Beautiful woman, look Your fairies suddenly rise within the battles in my mouth With thin branches I test time towards the moon. Extend my possibility. I said love, I said gently I said say scorched, say morning to the dreams Of the body we can never run out of forgetting (The rain will become sleepy) Say a stone With the gentlest love talk of what death knows With astonishment write in your book my beard my hair The mountain, spell them out, understand time, the tree. Say I have crossed the bridges one by one the rivers one by one And the motion of redness kneaded in the dark With sharp breath like knives inclined towards skin You İlhan, you know the howness of this, from Bingöl to Genç run the depth of the valley over my legs. Give my life to the desert wilderness, to the bird To the darkness. From the roots of my hair to the roof Of the sky, extend the atlas of silence over your mouth Parting in butterflies of silence. I got on a horse and made towards the rain. I memorised the clouds in your accent. And I want dresses in ant-sized steps

215