The Brunik Notebook: After a Disaster
From Reversed: Collected Poems (1988-2016)
Levent Yılmaz
Translated by Nazım Hikmet Richard Dikbaş
***
“They remind us that an ancient, very ancient era
of the world continues to live with us today. And that inside of us,
we carry a very ancient era of the world...”
Bilge Karasu, Ode to the Pomegranate and the Fig, p. 19
The number of lizards has been increasing in recent days. We are worried, I am worried. The bird comes and perches every morning Atop a wilting pine tree, on the very end chirping at equal intervals, always the same tune. Is the world merely recurrence? In the old days, when it was the past, we came within a whisker of disaster, we were afraid. So what now? What will we do now? • We sought shelter in this house, we sought shelter in a house. We are on a slope; and when we look down from the verandah, into the middle of the valley from a distance, I would call it calm you would call it truly tempestuous a river runs, perhaps, noisily, perhaps. I cannot hear it flow, I do not see it run. So we have closed in, withdrawn towards each other, and that is how time is, bearing on us, holding us, “like a keystone”. The last moment crushes the one before, and destroys it. This is war, a war which appears not to take place. • Out of the misty past certain images return, come close and press against me to suffocation. Breathe? Drawn by whom? Crouching I flee to the meadow But oh, you old specifics How will I know you now or remember the virtues of your leaves? I have forgotten your properties, which skies you love, which cloud you follow behind. Others will know I know not the plant itself, but the image of the plant. My brothers and sisters in coincidence. • The days seem overcast, and have ever since the lizards began to increase in number. Is it me who’s strange or the environment, the universe hushed again, the grass wet. It is happening in a great silence, whatever it is. And yet, just yesterday... • The sky had gone dark, the storm descended, clouds swathed the mountains, snow no longer visible, the rope that connected us, and us to nature tautened, the first drops hit the ground, the first lightning, the sky roared for the first time with an ancient sound. Let’s cut the rope, we said, let’s cut the rope and go, we’ve had enough of fear, we can find another nature after all, somewhere within, and found another city, enough and more than enough, let us fear no more, not the storm, nor losing our way. • But when were we not afraid. Of this, of that, of water, of steel and the pounding hail. In this house where we took refuge, this nook, it’s over we said, let’s open the shutters. Roses crushed, ferns subjugated, the laurel broken. Had we stayed outside, we would have died. Inside there was no light, we had waited for the dark anger to abate, the fight to end, full of our desire to return. The world was undone then fixed. • Calm reigned as after pillage. A world of damage and debris. We propped up the oak limbs, melted sand, placed glass in the window profiles. Till it was stifling, and mildew grew in the mind. We did not want to be, if we were to destroy all verbs, could we return to nothingness? So we stand here, all we do is stand. A sound turns up and touches the ear, with a whisper, nowhere to be lost, nowhere to be found. Once upon a time, yes, in the evenings, around the fire, the old man used to produce his magic show, would disappear, pace the path, then reappear. That never happens now. • Day breaks and we have no hopes of the breaking day. Only muddle along as the day before, hope, forget and dream of setting the world in motion once again. We waited in vain for the star shower. A firefly made a green glow when he died, combusting as we lost ourselves among the constellations. We dreamed an old dream, the moon rose, we woke, our faces covered in silver dust. How long could this go on? • We forget our cares and abandon ourselves to that cheerful world of words, light, paintings. Thinking it may work. Thinking it may pass. The number of lizards is on the rise. They are there in the courtyard, just standing there, they disperse in various directions when you approach. The sun rises, the temperature rises. A fire in the distance, smoking within us, we smell of pines, of resin. Hours pass, I think the river is flowing, summer is ending. Memories end, plans end, so does the urge to become. • A village near the summit, when was it founded, by whom? The rocks have been shaped as if off-hand into natural steps, disproportionate, like our lives. Hard going. Rills, traces of yesterday’s storm slide, glisten and filter through the rocks. • A path of rotten leaves, beech branches, and the ghosts of black oaks. We climb and arrive at a plateau. The sun is shining. Scents anoint our heads, even before we breathe them in. We squat on the ground. Ahead, a carnation out of season and next to it a well, ice-cold water. There shouldn’t be any water here. We shouldn’t be here. But who is left to tell us that. Bees swarm over a blackcurrant bush, a robin has perched in a laurel, swallows flit by, a lizard watches from his distance. Then quick with its halting scuttle it slips into the water. Just as quickly I return across the years, to times when no one spoke of disaster, and wake to the buzzing of bees and the flatland. • I am attacked by a bee buzzing tangled in my hair. I whirl around beside myself, mad they’d say, but really hurting. It stings me right beside the eye. My temple throbs. Just then, a child appears: - Brother, brother, are you all right? - I’m fine, it’s just a bee sting. - Rub a tomato on it, also mud. - All right. But you should get back home. - I haven’t got a home. And there’s a pack of dogs on the road. Then. Then a hush fell. In the silence I forgot the idea of disaster, the bee, the pain, I was torn apart from today. Now the world seduces me, it clasps me in its arms and caresses me, I feel its kiss and I am loved. I live. • Language says what it likes. The word arrives at the tip of my tongue. How do those sounds mingling in the air unite in a piece of meaning? I wondered then, I wonder now. A squirrel sits high in the walnut tree. The child is gone. Here am I, where I was, at the foot of the same wall. Again I return to years ago despite the blanks. I ought to go home and check my notes. How did we arrive in this particular now, with neither tulips nor roses sprouting from our chests? Once there was a tree known as the Judas tree... • - Hey, you’re asleep again! They nudge me. I wake up squinting against the dazzle. The sun an army Bristling with its rays: Its piercing spears. I close my eyes again. My eyelids seen from within become a shadow screen, strange forms appear, faces turn into lines, colors change. What I have been watching is a dream. No swollen eye, no bee, no child, no joy, no movement, no sound, no speech, no nudge. I look at the valley. The river seems to be flowing. This time everything will be different. • Today is January twenty-third. So it has been two months since I came here. When we have severed ties with places we took for home, the scents and ties we took for home and set out for other places once we have arrived and struggled to live and grow accustomed, how can we know if we’ll embrace this sky where we arrive, the sky we find, the strange scent now presenting as the new life? • Leaving didn’t you say of course you were coming back Didn’t you say but it hurts Couldn’t you tell this might be forever Weren’t you afraid, tied up in knots Who ever left without thinking of the return And I used to say, of course, I will certainly return. • Get used to leaving if it is easy as that, think of the ones before who set out on long journeys to distant lands never sure they would return, think of the anxious, fearful waits. Old. Past. I’m there. I stand. I look away. Yet now? This is not the otherness I saw when I looked at the past. This is not that future. The time I live in now is not that future of old, the future I foresaw, the future I discerned. Why not? How strange. It’s different here. What now? Show me the now of tomorrow, or can I see from here? • When you come to the now of tomorrow is everything perhaps no, not perhaps definitely absolutely the same? In the nows of tomorrow I will look at other futures give myself up to dreams, and slip ahead. • Other lives, those dreams change, flatten seen finally from the side. Once you are there, wherever, it becomes the only place, the place you get used to, that site restored according to old dreams, with new habits picked up along the way. We would have built an enchanted sky. • Go toward the hills, go up above the harbor. Wish for humid air, a sullen sky, say that’s what suits my soul; may a soft wind touch your back. Tremble. May the clouds disperse. Squint out to sea, may the waves flock to you like lambs, may boats rock to one side and the other, lifelike. Walk down the empty street as if life has never come around here. Believe in ghosts and yourself. Say, “Everyone has left”, and add, “they have sailed out to sea, in swift black ships!” Patiently they journeyed toward a new world of their dreams. No one is left apart from you. Pray for their return, pray that they might return, pray. Don’t stay alone any longer in this city. • Their imagination is as deep as the water in the bay. Small town. Narrow streets. Spleen. Escape? That desire is so deep, these ones have never even dreamed of reaching a post, a harbor. Was the return included in their departure? Would life expand within these gloomy hearts? • Were we the ones who issued the permit? Did we make the arrangements for disaster? Since I can no longer think about the past, these questions have lost their meaning too. I say it will be different from now on, So I always said. And here I am. • Their memories, too, are only as deep as their dreams; look down in the water in the gulf and you will understand. They have only one door left ajar: their corneredness. The only chance, to escape. The only aim, to reach, wherever. The verb return was set afire in city squares. Life adapts, they say, penned in a narrow place. Dreams, they say, are born of traps and helplessness. • Alright, I am leaving. No more mangle [like for washing clothes?], bridge, or crossing. I’m far away. I have left. I am over there. But then what is this dark cloud whirling above us, why does it veil our visions, what is this in the wind so reminiscent of itself? Does no difference exist? Is there no possible other? Why do you follow me, affinities? Why not desert me, soul? Why do you take a glassy shape, shatter, destroy, blow, crush and saunter? To see standing before us the creatures of imagination frightens us. • What wears us out, past or world? How fast does the new world age? Does life rise from the dead to haunt us? And why should we be afraid? A rotten life, having dozed off, will trip us all over. Why do we stand it in the end? We know disaster well, and still we watch, familiar purple sunsets, mushroom clouds. I don’t care how many days have passed. Idle foreman of the idlers, idle journeys, wasn’t the world always an idle purlieu? Swordfish, ink-fish, octopus: When did you come to be and when did you fill the seas? I am afraid of history. • The wind is blowing; a whisper, the first language: I understand you, distance, daughter. She tells the tale: If it doesn’t last long, it brings you back to life, if it blows, if it is the salt on your skin, the smell of the sea, if the clouds disperse, if it is an old light, if it is disappearance and a climb to the pinnacle, if it is anguish and a forest fire, if it comes, if they summon it... The scent of the linden is a sentence of its own. • Meeting, we never talk. We have no rules. Or, our gazes determine what we do, what we must do. Which of us is guilty? When did we invent punishment? How cold it has become. Let me draw my hand on these walls, some giant bulls. Then my brother shall come, and bring an oil-lamp, let us sit down and talk. Let us tell each other of things we might yet try, of the world outside. We lived in a great wide present without so much as a mirror. • Not everyone can be everyone. You’re afraid, I understand you. Let’s go and pick mushrooms under the oak trees. Let us then return, pick up a stone, and scabble it, chip it down, the way we learned from our uncles on both sides: May each stone be similar, but itself. Let them be ours, let them be beautiful. May we thus find beauty. Fearing, striving, in distress. Let this uneven, ochre-hued and scratched rock signify nothing. May it not speak, may it remain silent. Let us remain silent, let us cast spells, let us tremble, may our bodies move, may movement fill us up, let us lose control. Let us be grateful that we can. • No longer. We are diminished. He has gone. Never again will he sit here on this slope and watch the stars. Never again will we embrace, and never laugh. Never will he lead me to water or show me the way. We laid his body out between the two linden trees. We stood in silence, a long silence which was itself a conversation. In other times and places when one of us died, violent speeches would be made, swelling speeches full of rage. Then it was as if death did not exist. Is it now that the world is ugly and false? • She touched my back: collect yourself. I looked into her eyes. When did the rain reach her soul? We embraced. We stood apart. Under a light rain we headed home. Time will go by, again. What are we two, and why? • Now, I say to myself. The time is now. I am the now, I am the lion on the bull, I am the sacrifice itself. I am the slave and the master. I am blunted passion, I am counterfeit hope. There is no other anymore. How should one live alone? I have to go tomorrow, I should go early to bed, early to rise and reach the other side before the frozen river thaws. • They were like jade, transparent, restless. After sitting under almond and mulberry for hours Up they would go to clear rocks from the field but always waiting for a sign. To climb trees, to wash their faces, to pick fruit, a sign was always needed. When we arrived at the seaside with our flock, the sun was like a melon above us. So we leapt into the water and after us came the sheep. Whim. We swam, we laughed, we grew tired and when we took to our beds slept all night through. Peace returned to the courtyard. The turkey strutted and preened. • Spring’s coming, will you come too? We won’t be in the fields then, so come to the village. It won’t be so deserted. Lamb roasted in the oven all day, and bread too, we can climb the hill to the saint’s tomb. We can tell our troubles to the rose trees. Night came and enveloped us, it took us under the sea, we found coffers of gold, we said we can’t be alone in the universe, voices summoned us to houses, and then again, then the owners of those voices arrived, and we were forcibly taken away. So impatiently we waited for morning and the renewal of the game. • Solitude again, that weight, like eyes turned away, mourned, longed for, returned, then solitude again. All eyes turned away, and then... • Dust of the past everywhere. Memories like sand, carried around by the cat with her paws, scattering them as she walks across the rooms. Paintings, doors, handwriting, scents, it’s them. This pain, this strange sensation, homelessness will soon finish me off. Not to belong, not to take sides, not to be the apple of your eye. Roughness of the blank, squirming barking nature of moments. Why seek excitement, why not settle down, swarthy beauty, what is driving us, and how far will it go? What follows us, the north-east wind, which secretion, where, which nerve, and to which one? Yet how hard to go back. • Today I know. I am in the wrong. But how can you be sure, in which room, to what, how? A curse, love, can’t we talk? Not to go far, only to leave life, only to leave your life. There was a jinn, inside of me, inside my lamp, it came out. I found. Not to return. To stay. To struggle. To accept. To change, as quick as I say the word. Who are we now, what is time? It is a rage. • The stars collided, I wished for a hawk. You lived in other springs, with other flowers – Don’t ask me to second-guess my wish As if were the medicine of life. • Will the unspeakable be told one day? Will a person be saved by writing more words? And will he go mad not writing them? [1999-2001 ; 2007 ; 2014-2015] |