File spoon-archives/postcolonial.archive/postcolonial_2001/postcolonial.0110, message 391


From: "Salil Tripathi" <salil61-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Fwd: BOUNCE postcolonial-AT-localhost: Post limit exceeded
Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 04:53:48 +0000



>dear anna (and dear adil)
>
>this one bounced back, thanks to the merciless and humorless guillotine of 
>the poco listserv. but i've tracked down one poem of alev's. alev, i take 
>it this is the real thing? i'd be happy to repost this tomorrow, unless one 
>of you does this before i do....... i'm sure there will be other responses 
>i'd have to deal with tomorrow as well, and the listserv will be as 
>merciless.....
>
>cheers
>
>salil
>---------
>
> >Alev Adil
> >A Turkish Poet in Exile
> >(for Mehmet Yasin)
> >part one
> >
> >Sunday fuels the silence
> >that this new language imposes.
> >The buses hardly come
> >and when they do
> >I have no idea of their destination
> >but sail them anyway
> >as a leaf a hostile wind.
> >Even the ghosts are unfriendly:
> >the song of speech
> >transposed to quite another key.
> >Call it selfishness but this crowded place
> >becomes merely my soliloquy.
> >London, Paris, Berlin,
> >Istanbul, Izmir, Ercan,
> >sometimes it's all I can do
> >to list the airports of my trajectory.
> >My favourite book,
> >my other sock
> >always left behind in another country.
> >Sometimes it seems to be because
> >of the courage of convictions,
> >or maybe merely chance,
> >malice or aimless vindictiveness.
> >(I have not spoken all day.)
> >All lies: not Art, not Love,
> >not Truth. Only money
> >could vanquish these steely beginnings
> >of Europe's exile winters.
> >Perhaps I never had what I lost.
> >My poems aren't even
> >vivid, weathered leaves.
> >nobody catches them
> >and makes a wish.
> >I shed them still, or worse,
> >swaddle myself in them
> >like a tramp,
> >old news keeps me warm.
> >The thing is to keep
> >to keep remembering
> >remembering in order
> >in order to exist.
> >
> >part two
> >
> >Tonight's interpreter is paper thin
> >but given volume by my mother tongue.
> >Despite the warmth of meaning
> >years of misuse have worn holes
> >in her comprehension.
> >After the reading our dialogue
> >flutters, cannot fly
> >the yeasty confines of the pub.
> >My words have not travelled,
> >left behind at some golden moment
> >hindsight calls innocence.
> >So I shout
> >poems shredding their skins
> >but not quite baring
> >their bone white onion hearts.
> >My interpreter's threadbare language
> >shimmers, a seductive moth eaten dress.
> >Whilst she is at the bar
> >a man with honey for eyes
> >floating in his raw face
> >leans over me
> >and the incomprehensibility of his words
> >is no protection from the halitosis
> >of an international sentimentality.
> >He knows it all he says,
> >"Two lovers,
> >don't do it.
> >Are you Jews?"
> >"He thinks we're arguing"
> >my translator tells me,
> >"that you're breaking my heart."
> >"Are we Jews?" she interprets.
> >"Am I a Jew now?" I wonder.
> >Have I wandered enough
> >or are there centuries to go?
> >In a matter of months there is no place to call
> >home except my memory.
> >We're not, we're not
> >We're not.
> >(And no cock to crow for Saint Peter.)
> >"We're not." she reiterates angrily.
> >
> >
>

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