ilhan Berk

IT WAS A LONG DAY I WAS RETURNING TO LOVE

It was a long day I was returning to love
Long, my one, as long as loving you
There I was, saying here is the first kiss your blue cleft
Here is morning's seven and your wet mouth
Here is some old grass of your groin and stomach
Here is what your tongue brought forth, here my forests
Here is your waking in the bed, stretching naked
Here striking rocks your old shadow your old voice
Here is that olive-skinned bird in your throat, that wild river
Stay like that, I said, stark naked, intimate
Stay like that, first I'll kiss you there
Dark as love is, it's a one-syllable word
Stay exactly like that my love, is what I said

THE SECRET HISTORY OF NATURE

I saw Nature's inner workings. Its movement and change
Like a History of people, of those born, living, dying
Scattering themselves
(putting forth their priorities and their discontinuities)

I saw running water renewing itself
I saw it inflamed, rebellious
rising.

I saw it and said: this river births me.

This flatness coalescing without the newborn or the evolving.

This pain impressing its form on salt and stone.

I saw that great arbiter, nature
I saw all that in nature is there for man.

SKY DRIFTED OVER ME

I'm looking at sky coming and going
A stream runs beside me, over its stones
Then suddenly stops as if flowing no more.

I saw water changing shape and form
I saw it in the shape of my hand
I saw it had no form
In its vast history.

So it is I said, rising to leave. Sky dissolving
A horse flicked its tail, a goat stretched out
Step by step on stones I passed the running stream
Then watched the water I‘d pelted with stones.

Sky drifted over me.

SLOWLY QUIETLY I PASSED THROUGH CROWDS

Slowly quietly I passed through crowds
like the sea's surge swelling and ebbing
and slowly quietly I withdrew
within me from where it passed. Slowly
quietly I touched pain, quartz, poetry
slowly quietly weighed water, knew its weight
scents
geography.
Then leaning over I came to know the body, its order
and I saw the absolute flatness of silence
nothing that I saw did I see repeated
my exterior slowly quietly was made human
so I mingled with crowds
and like this I became a crowd.