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)