Poetry

You can no longer warm your cold hands, nor offer them in friendship. You have time to look back only once to see the life of your friendship with the flowers, the pleasure you take in love, the light ignited in your heart of hearts.
It is most unfortunate, but there are those who decide your tomorrows. Perhaps the month of March will not return, and the feet of a child will not break the snow. The marks left by war will not longer retire in the schools after you. Books will speak of you. Throw me once more into the arms of my mother, before the bloody marks show, before the agonies. Bid adieu to the flowers, their breath cut off. The time narrows and suffering tramples on your sentiments.
You will never forget while memories sink into living hearts. Why do they wish to make war instead of leaving their fears and resentments? Have you ever though about what they want of you? It is their internal enemy that mobilizes them!
I know that you find yourself facing the folly of those who cannot hear themselves. I can do nothing! I cannot prevent the animosity that makes you a target of killing and sorrow. You are a tiny tot - I love you dearly! Tomorrow the poisons embedded in the recipes of those who seek cover for their fears and complaints will slacken...passions will surely cause hands to tremble while they design with blood as their ink. You can be sure of it my child!
If your starving mother falls on her tears at the table before she can eat a morsel of bread, do not forget to give her a smile, my child! At present, you see who smells like oil, under the menacings of war. Iraq vibrates before your windows, and old lives. I know that flowers do not live in the mouths of canons...war holds grief, not joy, in its foyers! Throw yourself once more into the arms of your mother before the blood flows, and the suffering.
 
by Uzeyir Lokman CAYCI
Mantes la Ville, 01.03.2003
Traduit par by Yakup YURT en français
French free verse translated into English free verse
by Joneve McCormick