Poetry

Friend, you’re not the guilty one
The guilty ones are the evenings
See how they drag you down into this obscurity...
Trouble not yourself
Everyday’s "Love’s Labour Lost"
Vanishes away
Your eyes have learned
The meaning of love anyway
Learn how not to remember
Every point of suffering.

Remember not those eyes, those eyes
Have gone and they’ve enticed you into smoky cafés
Don’t go and believe
your eyes, they're just not
as sharp as they used to be
Friend, because you aren’t the guilty one,
The guilty ones are hopes
Leaving you to the shadows.

So what’s the use of fussing
If they’ve never understood
The poems your own baggy eyes
Have forgotten? ...

You’re alone in an unknown beyond
Your eyes are alone as well ...
You’re not guilty, friend
The guilty ones are hopes
Leaving you alone in darkness.

Üzeyir Lokman ÇAYCI
İstanbul,  20.02.1975
Translated from Turkish to French by Yakup Yurt
followed by English translation by Richard Vallance