Literature: Anıl Can Uğuz – İncire Ağıt / Lament To A Fig /Klagesang Til Fiken (Şiir)
I won’t fit this coffin Leyla
The sun below the earth is warm still but
When the ways you don’t love me
Like crows have aligned on cornfields
To amass sands in my mouth
Would be good news to the life I maledict.
I won’t fit this coffin Leyla,
The botany will go to pot
If I pluck you as a flower from the stem
But I’ve died,
Imagine that, a fish strangled itself to death
This life I’ve plaited with scrap hands
This eye twitching, this forlorn bed
-the mercy I’ve made up to muddle through myself-
I’ve died now I can say:
Everything has it’s own name, how strange!
I won’t fit this coffin Leyla
Through these houses where everything smells not musty but of naphthalene
I’ve passed many times
And their rooms where flour is kneaded
Often I’ve fallen from the fig tree in eventides grayish-blue
To elude my babyhood
I’ve soldered figs milk to my mouth
Though I’ve winded up my hands on nettle as I wept
-there are bottles of cologne or oil soap-
I was gifted for kindling a stove.
I won’t fit this coffin Leyla
I grew up cross with my mother
I didn’t say, she was importunate to delusion
How simple it is to grow suspicions –mom my head is itching!-
Shampoo for lice had just then freshly minted
Unraveled, like a whistle through the mouth of getting even
I’ve conceded that cowardice was congenital
From mother’s stirps.
I won’t fit this coffin Leyla
My father spared his semen for this trunk
For the sake of sparse joy
-The demon lamenting for us to skirt-
They’ve cut a rooster in the yard
My grandpa sticking a biting cry on his forehead
Wiped down that heart and home where ivy was roasted for years
With his festive handkerchief
Hefty precautions settled on my chubby cheeks.
I won’t fit this coffin Leyla
I’ve known scarfed peddlers
-who’s gum I’m frightened to take-
I hid in the mosque courtyard
Olly olly, the oxen was free, I thought there’d be a sound
I thought my grandma spoke German
When she called my bicycle a velocipede
I snitched silverberries at nightfall
And climbed on cob walls as I ran
I toiled incessantly; couldn’t shatter a single stone in Yedikule*
I won’t fit this coffin Leyla
In this tomb filled with figs
The smuggled tea spilled on my back
The soot of Hıdrellez** that seeped into me
The moon I supposed was god
The scent of smut
My mother’s two-millimeter knitting needle
That weaved
My purple vest victim of brazen moths
Would want to be buried along with me!
I was yet to make nestlings from your voice
-That were ashamed of their craw at the sight of the starved-
Prophets dwell there, I know
The faiths I tell of you
Are too pagan for them to comprehend
Vampires too were almost out of business the day I kissed your neck:
Perhaps I’ll be somewhat revived Leyla
If you weep enough to wash over me.
*: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C4%B1d%C4%B1rellez
**: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yedikule_Fortress
Translated with the author’s approval by: Ege Dündar
Literature +: Laris Polat (Illustration- Inspired by Anıl Can Uğuz)
