I'm not farther from death than you are,
Tender leaf, slender branch.
We all live very close to it.
But my heart has been salvaged.
It's nearly off the map.

The heart doesn't reason this way  
In every man. It doesn't take wings
From its subterranean shell like this.
You are the stars of night,
You are the tree, a ballerina
Of grace. I'm the root.

Now you are exhausted.
You say your load was too heavy.
I forgave you, but you failed
To listen to me, drifting into your life
Of earnest foliage and birds' nests.

What were you saying to me,
To the one who always redeems
Fear has left you just skin and bones
Look: you are the one being tested
And tried. I am the root.

You close your windows feeling
Diminished,  belittled.
Your tiny world is fast disappearing
Into my immense space.

I don't know you well,
But I wasn't so crowded
Just a little bit earlier.
You're a bullet in the barrel,
An irrelevant splash.
I am the root.

The dead summoned their courage
And gathered to find arbitrarily, in one another
Love never seen before,
All-encompassing love without boundaries.

Maybe something will occur in the end
Your farewell imagined its own reality.
Your mouth said:
I am taking wings,
I'm contemplating.

I am a long and narrow road,
And will be closed down sooner or later.
I am the most disloyal traitor
To face your mask. Look now:
Your specter is lost inside me,
As if it had disappeared into a mirror.

You did this. You offered
thousands of lies to me
Instead of the truth. Death smiled
as a way to humiliate. I know
The earth. I am the root.



Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Dr.Nesrin Eruysal & Prof.Dr. Kenneth Rosen)

you are also passing through my heart
like the other rains;
the way we walk is a knife-cut
is it wothy of this passion?

chagrins pace back and forth in my heart
i stand like some soil, like a sea,
a colour whose memories will remain the same forever...

i open you
like a wardrobe from which dresses run out
when i open its door,
only agony comes out of you.

agony does not stay out of love
both in alliance and after getting divorce,
a part of man hurts.

is it easy to be able to look at the backside of the walls?
i prefer suffering in your absence
to suffering when i was near you.


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Baki Yiğit)

the face of yours the life appended a little sign
is like a cinema you touched on my forehead
a cold soda between the two acts
the lyric voice of the gong ringing hourly
the falling shadows of the buckthorn trees
a sky broken on a day of wind
form my frames of the sparrows left from the summer
the face of yours the life appended a little sign
is the alley of a district where the time is stopped
it is the ant, belonging to there, we meet
while touching the pebbles with our toes
who knows when, where, instantly
we had smelt a rain they dropped inside us
the face of yours the life appended a little sign
is the riverside, when I propped my mouth
the crotch wet I steal, form the times when there are no male
something which is garnet, a volcano
on the booms of which daisy, lily and some lime are piled
like cevdet anday says
“mountings are aside, we are aside”


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

I am scattering your dower with a future chest
I find a word from anywhere I touch
***** laces everywhere
an empty frame, licorice, a silent aria

tomorrow they change for yesterday, that I don’t love
for darkness, for the past, pellmell
it is life, I say myself, just life
I must say, no happiness without tear


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

I mean the rain you drop in my voice
like a cloth cut by scissors, bridling its mare
and my hand sniggering in lust
though a smell of a banana

in an old part of this city, all alone
in hotel rooms and on brass beds
dirtiest hours of my face
a sartor with winter night face.


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

a swallow from among clouds
will explode like southwest today …


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

just I existed
but no one
in place of me

a lily was bleeding  
in pure whiteness,
like your hands …

Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

we were ash with you, not fire
most beautiful of two mouthed women
much slimy spinach of my meal
an alienation in each quiet

I was sentenced you in birth, became a prisoner
you are a book, a dusty book
with leaning horizons from the edge
a tiny book in the palm

you are the autumn with faded leaves
an alienation in each quiet
I am scared when facing
what if my word is condemned

every man is an echo for himself  
there is not a water pounded in old mortars
every longing blossoms a space
in an escalloped daisy.


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

Morning about to come
like the voice of a lake
my voice is exhausted, its song swans
anyhow
each leaf
as wet as a hanky
says forget me never
forget me never…
yet
picking up flowers
is forbidden to us
knocking the bins down
railing the death five times
the sun seems like
the separation
I dropped the sorrow
under the shadow of the grapes I cooled
at a pergola
says forget me never
forget me never…

Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

I am the skeleton of the memories jiggling to Beyoğlu
the heart is swinging in my chest of my dreams
my eyes are not hollow, my hands are still warm
I’ve found the song I need to sing
I am whispering into the darkness, when will I be born
A lake, a swan of Anatolia, an eastern hollyhock
a steppe is steeped within me now
a train loaded with hope at Haydarpaşa
a lovely dog, a question, and then
I am whispering into the darkness, when will I be born


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

When you hung the phone in my ear in the evening
a kid was patting a cat on the threshold
the moon was wandering on the roof, a gong was pealing itself
I saw the trees blooming for the first time.

Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

I closed my eyes against the trouble
a window was opened in front of it; I am able
to know you, sundries that are large and small
of the houses, the dead left behind us
The beatles playing on the radio wings
your tired and sweaty horses instantly
the horses waiting saddled to the blues
to which I bridled, on the plain of my heart
You mouths look like the men with clumsy hair
who whipped wind-up toys in childhood in the streets  
your fruits taste like the rapt, sourish friendships
while they are gathering for the morning
They got lost at full gallop with the longing
for their youthfulness days they lost
your horses whose manes were embroidered
with unhappiness, an escapee wind in their pillions
I am pulling you into the shallows of the sea
without hurting, into a minaret of fairy
while the old clowns of our hearts
drowning of happiness in an evening


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

son, your beard ****** my face
was saying my mother, a poppy field
an unhappy water flowing through my word plain
a rattle, a mute bloodstone
a wild blizzard blowing from my chest
the moon sits on the saddle of the two branches
she even chases up me in my dreams
grinding my shadow like my footsteps.


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

Istanbul is wandering on my forehead
the seagulls are flying from my chest
the clouds of the longing on their eyes
the dream showers on my eyelashes
As I compose the poems of the sorrows
pile on my letters the greetings of the fellows
the pipes urges my heart
istanbul doesn’t shelter in my heart
What wraps my shoulders are the shawls of the separation
pours down on me the coolness of the night
you were crippled by how many bends that your wound doesn’t bleed
a light grabbles our memories
It is fall that caresses the hairs of our lives
when my eyes touch the tree on black and white
of a photograph, my mind is scattered
the leaves of the love surround my heart
My loneliness cut out from the cloth of the sorrow
is the pages of the summer, which are not closed
not death, a hope, what my tongue says, anyhow
wait for my youth, you are my longing oh istanbul.


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

the rain is coming
you’d better open the umbrella
the knees of your dead father are aching
his finger is about to touch
on the ring of the door of the son
a kid, a hanky of cherry,
the sounds on the way
close, within them
each death is a revival
say remediless leave your body hey heart
become an island, you, I said don’t shelter
oh son, your dead father is sitting
under the umbrella
I am no one
I got soaked under the rain
and solely run dry
with the words of mine
now I am kissing the rain
saying goodbye to this city
The city is the station of both the landlord
and the passenger oh son
the rain is coming
the umbrella…


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

we used to shorten a street by talking
in a wine cup to each other
escaping the tempered sadness
to each other like lips

through a night as far as fire and ice
we stayed, like a meteor falling in water
waiting for morning in alert
door, window, glass, feeling the wind

all were trembling like candle light
roof, stable will slump, rails are ratty
we knew, and looked the double row
palms, street, wine, lips.


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

neither do I have a rosebay to touch
nor a sky to love
only I have is a street
that I pass through the revery

my heart is like a ridgeway
that I fold myself its end
a hanky, my lover, lace is north wind
from which my tears pour nacres


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)

your eyes are so silent, a butterfly
flowing inside me, like a velure river
an underground city, a station
where words by-pass

a gillyflower diminishing when smelt
a sky wearing the lover out in me
maybe we are living to lose
this eternity, we two


Koray Feyiz
(Translated from Turkish by Koray Feyiz)