Tozan Alkan (Turkey)

Tozan Alkan (Turkey)

Tozan Alkan
Born in 1963. His poetry publications: Time and mask (Donkişot Publications 2003), Early evenings of Heart (Donkişot Publications 2005), And the wind (Artshop Publications 2007), Death will hit the spot (Selected Poems in English, Yasakmeyve Publications, 2009), The city will come to you (Yasakmeyve Publications, 2011), Open door (Islık Publication, 2017), Now (Collected Poems, Islık Publications, 2019). He is the editor-in-chief of literary magazine Virus. He is a member of Turkish PEN, Writers Syndicate of Turkey, and Turkish Authors Association. He has translated many poets and authors from English, French and Spanish into Turkish such as Anatole France, Charles Baudelaire, Lord Byron, Victor Hugo, Oscar Wilde, William Blake, Emily Dickinson, Tristan Tzara, Philippe Soupault, D.H. Lawrence, William Butler Yeats, Gabriel Garcia Lorca and Alfonsina Storni. His poems have been translated into many languages. He was awarded “Behçet Aysan” and “Metin Altıok” prizes in poetry.


Tales to my Son

You have come to become a son
So that you hug the rain
To become a son takes very long
Remember your mum

When your pencil touches the paper
You will grow up to a few words
The wind will be your brother
The steppe will be your grief

Life is wet
The meaning starts so
The sea has never been blue
The blue has never been blue
The sky has never been existed
So far

I want to see you biting an apple
I want to see you thinking
Your hands on your face  
I want to see you making love
Under the trees whose names you don’t know

I always want to see you
Like this, don’t forget;
Every touch leaves a trace
In your hands a wind inherited from your grandfather
A kite inherited from your dad

Translated by Tozan Alkan


Broken desire

I always tested you with kindness
but love is like a floating mine
that has killed so many dear ones
you were passing through the bazaars
there was a woodland ahead of us
it was full of almond tress

everybody was looking for a peaceful dream
in pitch-dark nights
your body is in the deepest corner of my mind
half dream, an unfulfilled desire
come on be a free soul
let your blond hair down twirling

never mind what may happen to us
sometimes isn’t  this disorder we call life
like scattering our own ashes in blue waters
anyway it is not only the water
that flows under the bridges
love too flows.

Translated by Nilűfer Mizanoǧlu Reddy

 
At the bottom of the wall

You have just died
all the daylights of the earth  are breaking
inside me at the moment

a swarm of men at the bottom of the wall,
we’re talking about horses for a long time
about the density of stone
about how water leaks through the concrete

the residents will be evicted from the house
but nobody is worried about the plum tree
that will be cut down in the backyard

a woman is fixing her hair with the fingers
holy books and prophets at her bedside
it’s a burned forest what she is kissing

we keep looking at each other every so often
at a scratched disc, at a broken watch
indeed everything is for being late to daily life
the plum tree appears between us
its flowers are in agony

we, men waiting at the bottom of the wall
are looking into the cracked lips of the soil absently
there be not only one word to be heard

not only one word
to be heard

Translated by Ilyas Tunc
 

The Acrobat

Sometimes the world seemed too low to me
The earth under my feet was pulled away
I used to live without a care
With ants and insects for ages.

Whatever they might say love was beautiful
I used to bend down to kiss the lips of a gypsy
In the endless silence touching the heart
My mind would stretch all the way down to my feet.

Now I am a man who doesn’t touch the ground
Broken toward the horizon, in fire toward the ashes
You’ve killed me before the gravity would get me
Oh my feet, my tired feet!

Translated by Nilűfer Mizanoǧlu Reddy

 
The City
For Kavafi

A city will come to you from afar
will come burdened with a dark infatuation

From branches of a desolate tree
will come shedding pain like a mulberry

After many a year on a misty morning
will come to your door like an injured horse

From the dusty altar of paper and pen
will come galloping, ripping its white shroud

Winning a hand that had lost in love
will come wiping out its past history entirely

From the saddle of language, from the speed of letters
will come to speech from deeply hurt words

A city will come to you from afar
will come passing through a human race.

Translated by Suat Karantay

 
Granada

Poetry is the angel of imagination
       Azarias Pallais

I gathered rain today from the trees
Is Granada a poppy, it is not
A love-making perhaps of grand style
Like a volcano pouring
its lava into us

the drooping of his shoulders
portend the advent of winds
a single poppy illumines the public
a tree eaning against another tree
a forest is a potential fire for another forest

Loves are my only brethren
My skin is in the custody of words
These mountains, this darkness, this fog
The sulphur I breathe, the river I drank
In your name

Is poetry reduced to poverty, no!

Translated by Ender Gurol