ONE DAY SURELY

Today I made love and then I joined in a march
I’m exhausted, it’s spring, I’ve got to learn to shoot a gun
this summer
The books pile up, my hair’s getting long, everywhere there’s a
rumble of anxiety
I’m still young, I want to see the world, how lovely it is
to kiss, how lovely to think, one day surely we’ll win
One day surely we’ll win, you money-changers of old,
you goose-brains, you grand-vizier!
My beloved is an eighteen year-old girl, we’re walking down
the avenue, eating a sandwich, talking about the world
Flowers blossom ceaselessly, the wars go on, how can everything end
with a bomb, how can they win, those filthy men
Long I ponder, I wash my face over and over, dress myself
in a clean shirt
This tyranny will end one day, this feast of plunder will end
But I’m tired now, I’m smoking a lot, a dirty overcoat
on my back
Furnace smoke rises into the sky, in my pockets
books of poetry in Vietnamese
I think of my friends at the other ends of the earth,
of the rivers at its other ends
A girl dies quietly, dies quietly over there
I’m crossing bridges, on a dark and rainy day, walking
to the station
These houses are making me sad, this slap-dash world
People, the sounds of motors, fog, the water flowing on
What to do… what to do… everywhere the dregs of sadness
I lean my brow against cool iron, those old days
come to mind
And me… I was a child, I would surely have things to love
I’m thinking about coming back from the movies, about my mother,
how can everything die, how can someone be forgotten
Oh, sky! I used to lie still beneath you, oh you
gleaming fields
What to do… What to do… later I was reading Descartes…
My beard’s getting long, I’m in love with this girl, it’s just
a little hike to Chankaya
A Sunday, a sun-lit Sunday, how tumultuous is my heart,
how I mingle with the people
A child peers from a window, a child with great
dreamy eyes
Then his brother looks out, who resembles the childhood
portraits of Lermontov
I’m writing a poem at the typewriter, I’m intrigued by the newspapers, the sounds of birds come to my ears
I’m a modest poet, my beloved, everything gets me
excited
So what is there to cry about, when gazing on the common man

./..

I’m looking at the guy’s ears, his neck, his eyes,
eyebrows, the play of his face
Oh people, I say, oh child, and as I say it I feel like crying
I curse all the individualist poets, I’m going to the market
to buy an orange
I curse those chattering crowds, their withered hearts,
the liberation of the individual and the like
I curse those bookworms, and then I forgive them all
After long winter nights, who knows how things happen
After long winter nights that are told of in legends
Over and over I think on these things, a joy follows
close upon a sorrow
My heart is a changeable springtime sky, in short,
a Turkish heart
Waiting’s left me fed-up, I’m anxiously explaining things
left and right
I get on a bus, I’m intently inspecting a bug held by
the wings
I used to walk in the spring to the fields
where those ruins and pastures are
His poem came to mind, that old American’s poem
that told about autumn
There were meadows in that poem reminding me still of spring
So am I readying myself anew for excitement,
for rushing out again into the street
To throw myself head-first off a cliff
Something large and blue left an impression on me, was it from a film I saw, or what
A hat, an anxious sky, a hot artificial world
Tell and tell, it never ends, it never ends, this nostalgia in me
I could sacrifice all my loves at one go, all those rainy roads come to mind
The smells of gasoline, damp electric-poles, my father’s
plump and warm hands like brown loaves
I used to drowse, suddenly you’d look up and there’s a new film at the cinema, a new girl in town, a new waiter at the coffee shop
She would stand there on the balcony in her dressing-gown
melancholy
Ok, so what is there to be sad about in this, why
this throbbing heart, this anxiety
It seems like I’ll die tomorrow, the police will come
a little later, or else
They’ll come and take my books, my typewriter, this poem,
the picture of my beloved on the wall
They’ll ask my father’s name, where I was born, and,
if you would be so kind, down to the station
I think about my friends at the other ends of the earth,
the rivers at its other ends
A girl dies quietly, dies quietly in Vietnam
Weeping, I draw the image of a heart in the air

./..

I wake up crying, one day surely we must win
One day surely we will defeat you, oh you importers, exporters, oh you great cleric of Islam
One day surely we’ll defeat you, one day surely we’ll defeat you, we’ll say it a thousand times
Then a thousand times more, then a thousand times more, we’ll multiply it with marching songs
I and my beloved and my friends we will all march down the boulevard
We will march with the enthusiasm of being created anew
Ever multiplying we will march…