Life's journey is hard for everyone,
but always try, as best as you can,
that it'd be a white-sailed ship
that will be awaiting you when
your odyssey comes to an end.

Przemyslaw Musialowski 10/25/2020

Yahya Kemal Beyatli translations

Yahya Kemal Beyatli (1884-1958) was a Turkish poet, editor, columnist and historian, as well as a politician and diplomat. Born born Ahmet Âgâh, he wrote under the pen names Agâh Kemal, Esrar, Mehmet Agâh, and Süleyman Sadi. He served as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, Portugal and Pakistan.



Sessiz Gemi (“Silent Ship”)
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

for the refugees

The time to weigh anchor has come;
a ship departing harbor slips quietly out into the unknown,
cruising noiselessly, its occupants already ghosts.
No flourished handkerchiefs acknowledge their departure;
the landlocked mourners stand nurturing their grief,
scanning the bleak horizon, their eyes blurring...
Poor souls! Desperate hearts! But this is hardly the last ship departing!
There is always more pain to unload in this sorrowful life!
The hesitations of lovers and their belovèds are futile,
for they cannot know where the vanished are bound.
Many hopes must be quenched by the distant waves,
since years must pass, and no one returns from this journey.



Full Moon
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation by Nurgül Yayman and Michael R. Burch

You are so lovely
the full moon just might
delight
in your rising,
as curious
and bright,
to vanquish night.

But what can a mortal man do,
dear,
but hope?
I’ll ponder your mysteries
and (hmmmm) try to
cope.

We both know
you have every right to say no.



The Music of the Snow
by Yahya Kemal Beyatli
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch

This melody of a night lasting longer than a thousand years!
This music of the snow supposed to last for thousand years!

Sorrowful as the prayers of a secluded monastery,
It rises from a choir of a hundred voices!

As the *****’s harmonies resound profoundly,
I share the sufferings of Slavic grief.

Then my mind drifts far from this city, this era,
To the old records of Tanburi Cemil Bey.

Now I’m suddenly overjoyed as once again I hear,
With the ears of my heart, the purest sounds of Istanbul!

Thoughts of the snow and darkness depart me;
I keep them at bay all night with my dreams!

Translator’s notes: “Slavic grief” because Beyatli wrote this poem while in Warsaw, serving as Turkey’s ambassador to Poland, in 1927. Tanburi Cemil Bey was a Turkish composer. Keywords/Tags: Beyatli, Agah, Kemal, Esrar, Turkish, translation, Turkey, silent, ship, anchor, harbor, ghosts, grief, Istanbul, moon, music, snow

We've sailed cerulean seas to pastel shores,
Known only to the glorious few,
We have disembarked, ready to explore,
As our lone ship waits slumbering in view
of the glorious bay. Light paints daybreak
across the sky. We see the rising sun
through imagined jungle—and hesitate:
The image lingers, but it must be done,
Eyes close. Toward the interior we turn
remembering, and hoping to return.

Though another day passes,
once having arrived,
cinnamon sunny
with a misguided preaching
from a catholic church,

I recall our gorgeous
misty evening
right by the waves
from yesterday
and its one peculiar
moment:
my dad pointed to
a far away regatta
sailing in
a distance
whilst standing to my
right and asked
me not quoting

“Do you know why
I wanted to go
to the sea?
The vastness of that body,
no endings in infinity,
no one to tell me
what to do,
and once you sailed away
from the harbour
it was just
it
living.

Whilst I was on my night shift
at the very front
of the ship
on my ever first voyage
by sea,
heading to
England from Gdynia,
I felt as if I
was the very first
man to discover the oncoming
land,
like Cristopher Columbus
with his dear Santa María
breaking the waves”.

Yes, Dad.
I would add,
settled in my question

“Why do I long somehow
in smaller
or bigger
ways too at
times for that
aforementioned harbour
and otherness with so many
sounds, details,
lights and
dancing dangerous like
knives in a tavern
thrown?
For so similar
yet
so privately schemed
departures I paint?”,

I would answer
without Brain,
even if it would be solely
in perfect, dreamy way
sketched:

“Because there is
some greater and
truer breath
of mine held out
by a foreign hand
or by standing lonely
from the other mirror’s side
in front of some tremendous
waves of Kanagawa,
hugging itself small
yet with fearless Child’s
patience, like
the Young Verter
on his painting.
Some more abstract
and
breathtaking
with charisma image
of me there
stands, flowing
instead of walking,
through called aisles.
Beige coat into the
blue falling.

The No Man’s Skies
and Lands
(or yet
Of Some Men)
to be felt with all
the body and
upraising in all hues
and minute sacrifices
in speechless
wonders,
like lagoon’s turquoise
water that would shine
in a cave’s dark
with krill dancing.”

Some upholdings,
some blind images
and all rest
fresh,
windy,
dark
and light with grey
whose voicing
I cannot make,
not just to keep
it in immaculation
to stay non-maimed.

Tss
Ouch.
The Missing.

El,
ese,
acantilado.

I praise Allah and thank Them
in both the physical and existential aspect for every beautifully greyish day
when I feel back in an English harbour from the 17th century,
where birds, ropes, wind,
bells and hammers against
the ships’ casings resound,
half in my vision stuck on reality
and half verily,
or on a faraway heather field,
where my books, thoughts,
words in pictures
and lives of Heart
are as if my own
tremendous in passion atelier
of a scribe
or my other flowers of brown.

I posses adoration in these grays,
blues, whites,
greens and browns of these days, freshnesses and delightments.
Nevertheless I need to meet and comprehend each other
till the end belovingly
with the Sun,
see behind its backstage the lack of imposing Time,
periods or actions, rush.
Sit down once without carnal duties
nor other shenanigans
and witness the whole solar and lunar cycle for the whole 24 hours
and thus see beyond their mechanism
and presence
and thus go
through that next conscience,
through these silver-golden curtains
with navy blue clips.

Isn’t that sitting over,
sitting down face to face
with the Day,
supposed Time, Matter,
instead of constant doing,
having or confusion
of the thoughts
the same as finally looking
straight into the other person’s eyes
to give them our witnessing
of our attention,
a bow,
and at the same time
a proud head raising,
especially for them,
instead of walking around them
and treating as another matter
to be solved?
No rhetorical question.
May I reach as fast as it’s the best
the beloving of wisdom
as a true philosopher
in my identity, not cognitivity.

don't let
the ship sink,

and if
it happens,

don't
leave me
behind,

drown me
in your love.