Blood Sounds On My Handkerchief (Edip Cansever, 1928 – 1986)

You can make it to anywhere

It is never late for anything, yet

My child, forgive me

Brother Ahmet, you forgive me, too

If I look so destitute,

Not because I feel like it,

Not a bit

Oh dear brother Ahmet

Man resembles the place he lives in

Resembles its water, its soil

The fish swimming in its sea

The flower pushing its soil

The foggy slope of its mountains and hills

Konya’s white and

Antep’s red plains

He resembles its sky in that his tears are blue

The sea in that his glances are rough

Houses, streets and corners

How much he resembles

And the dooryards

(His heart squeezed with a well curb)

And its words

(In a word, a trade over a pocket mirror, maybe)

And resembles someone’s asking for directions one day

His looking upset while asking and asking

A glass-maker’s cutting glass, and a carpenter’s holding a plane

Lighting a cigarette, opening a crown cap bottle

Mini-buses, shanty houses

Resembles its longings, its lies

His memory is unemployment,

And his sorrow is his consciousness

His blade is his tears, about to dry

You can’t laugh, a laughter

Is a laughter only if a nation is laughing

How much we resemble Turkey, brother Ahmet

You would hold the glass so gently in the old days

Your elbow leaning against a stool

– ‘leaning against the sky’ I would once say-

Images on cigarette packs

Images: prisons

Images: longings

Images: from of old

And one of your eyebrows raised

Your love in haste

Your friendship quick

I see now that

The glass is like a swear word in your hand

And what is it that we call time, anyway, brother Ahmet

We would once visit train stations one by one

Back then the stations would smell of Malatya

Would smell of Nazilli

As Edirne mail train was soaking

Under Istanbul rain as thin as hair

You would feel like falling in love with a brunette woman

The woman’s fine calico skin

Very long neck

Eyelashes

And to you brother Ahmet

She would cut tomatoes and cheese from a distance,

Would set your table

She would put her hands onto what flows through your heart as if putting them into water

She would bring you cigarettes when you were in prison

Would give birth to children

Would crochet like lace the hands of those children who will clean up the world

Those children will grow up

Those children will grow up

Those children…

Don’t pretend not to know brother Ahmet

Incite hope

Soothe hopelessness

All I want to say is

The trains would resemble something dying out

But they are so functional now that

We almost live without dreams

Children, women, men

Trains are jampacked

Trains, like the trains heading for the frontlines

Workers

Workers going to Germany

Women

Some are passengers, some waiting for those living far away from home

Suitcases, string bags in their hands

Cologne, water bottles, packages

and they, all of them

growing towards wrong places like a captive tree

Oh brother Ahmet

Do you see

The stations now resemble marketplaces scattered around

And the country resembles marketplaces scattered around

I don’t even feel like feeling sad

Even though I feel sad

Not that constantly

Sadness passes by like a jazz song

That quick

That short

And that’s all

Brother Ahmet, my dear, why would a handkerchief bleed?

Not a tooth, not a nail, why would a handkerchief bleed?

Blood sounds on my handkerchief

-Translated by Rukiye Uçar (Mendilimde Kan Sesleri by Edip Cansever)