Ilhan Berk

translated from Turkish by George Messo

 

There Have Been Trees I Have Made Friends With

"I filled silence with names." Codified things. I have known the sky's and the trees' infancy. There have been trees I have made friends with. There still are. I didn't understand the Milky Way. Nor numbers. (They behaved as if they had yet to be discovered.) Except for eight (5+3) with whom I became intimate friends. (Who hasn't?) A little with zero too. (It's not been so easy to find zero.) I've heard terrible things about three. Why? I don't know. To know is a number. And I've also met one. You can't think with one. Some numbers are born guilty. One of them is one. I loved stones without asking why. The relation between the pebble's name and its shape has not been proved. I couldn't find a thing on the history of black amber. Fine. Mystery is everything. There are some consonants I couldn't read. (The letter's spirit abounds in consonants. American Indians knew this well.) I accompanied birds. Except for the turtledove, birds know nothing of numbers. Horses, I understood, don't dream in the East. (In Homer horses weep.) I have seen mountains while walking. And thinking as they walked. Recognition impedes reason. The World is ours! Said the snails, talking among themselves. I can't say I understand that. Nor that I don't understand it. One should read snails.

 

* * *

 

As you talk about rivers the rivers themselves are talking, grasses are in their eyes. Time is an illusion. Write this down somewhere. It's not true that spirit has no outward facing view. Jesus' ghost still roams the earth. (I only ask. It's only to question that one writes.) Those who forget their youth stagger in the morning. The rose exists because it is named. Stone got its name when its face was found. (Which is why masons turn stones around and around in their hands.)

I want to return to your eyes. And then . . . There's no such thing as "then." "Then" is outside history.

 

 

Copyright © 2008, Ilhan Berk & George Messo.

Ilhan Berk died on 28 August, 2008, at the age of 90. He was one of Turkey's most influential poets, and also an acclaimed visual artist. His publications in English include Madrigals (Shearsman Books, 2008), and A Leaf About to Fall: Selected Poems (Salt, 2006). Further volumes are forthcoming from the same publishers.