THE CEMETERY FOR TURKISH SOLDIERS

I

I'm a sailor in the navy,
fishes ate my eyes.
Seeing and weeping are over for me.
I was tall in my life,
if you don't believe me
look at my clothes.

Someone says -I'm a soldier too,
no different from the other dead.
Once we lived in houses.
Now we're outside the doors,
we pass through the wall.

And another says -
Don't believe them,
they're all liars,
we don't exist.

II

To enter my room with more ease
they come in the form of dead relations.
I look -it's an uncle or brother.
I look -it's a Polish sergeant
and at once he speaks.

I had a daughter five years old.
She's dead, now we're together.
She's fed-up here,
she can't roll a hoop,
she left her hands behind in Warsaw.

A voice says -
No potatoes to hoe,
no stones to break,
no burdens to carry to market,
I'm at peace here.

One is worried about his wife.
He asks me news from home.

When I died
they took my greatcoat.
I'm cold,
winter's ahead.

Then they speak as one.

III

"We drink water from one glass.
In the evening we eat together,
someone's in love with our loved one,
someone wants to be fostered by our mother."

They come and go at random on the ferries.
They enter our midst on the trams.
It seems they never leave us.
They want to live again a long time.


OKTAY RIFAT