Translation Review - The University of Texas at Dallas

from 101 One-Liners (101 Bir Dize)
Güven Turan
translated by Ruth Christie
1. Be silent, loneliness, your thunder rends my heart.
4. Evening has lifted duskʼs skirt and is taking a look.
6. This patter isnʼt rain, itʼs pine-needles pouring on the roof.
7. The seaʼs belly swells and swells and subsides; Day is born.
8. The pomegranate I split, a thousand sunbeams open to September.
9. Your body like the taste of water on hot days.
10. She sits by the window and combs her hair; the ice is beginning to melt.
11. Now he can say with ease, “Iʼm alone”; he has a lover.
12. I wipe the bloom from a damson plum, a storm clears away.
15. A thousand and one dewdrops glitter on the grass: night has dropped her necklace of day.
16. From its own voice the poplar tree recognizes the coming of winter.
17. Like a fragment of cloud the seagull swoops, circling, to the sea.
18. The wind strokes the velvet pile of the sea back and forth.
19. Propped up on ivy the old wooden house tries to stay upright.
20. They put down their saws, the cicadas are rasping away at the noon.
21. Laurel, myrtle, fi g: the brazier smokes incense over house and garden and sea.
24. Clinging to the tiller he thinks: to what do I owe my living? The wind, the boat, or the fi sh?
25. Apples cradled in her arms: her breasts cool, the apples warm.
26. No needles, no bark . . . The pine tree waits to be toppled; laden with cones.
28. “Stop there, donʼt pass the limit,” says the lighthouse to the open sea.
32. South wind. South wind. South wind. And rain.
38. Whose face is this taking shape in the frame of nothingness? When I come closer the mirror grows misty.
39. Your nakedness – a bashful childʼs fi rst day at school.
40. Days open up my life like scissors sliding through silk . . .
43. Above the snow the poplars are stark black; pure white by night.
44. Lʼobscurité et la perce-neige à travers la neige.
45. Sadness descends and settles on the meadows . . . hoar frost.
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