The Writer

Cevat ÇAPAN

THE WRITER

He's never written a word (he says)
that wasn't written for a beautiful girl.
Now he's nearly forty. Tedium
vitae's stealing up. The answers he gives
to interviewers from magazines
are weary. Talking to a student group
one evening, he seems far away
from his audience, though he speaks with confidence,
a confidence born of recent failures.
Scenes from his plays appear before my eyes,
scenes I saw at different times,
on different stages: misadventures on the road
from childhood into adulthood,
half-mad aristos, toadies at court,
wise old men taking umbrage,
hideways where lust and holiness
go hand in glove. And then:
to get out of the incense fug and dark,
to fields, green country, boundless plains.
"We made love on a riverbank that summer."
He opens his summer gates
with all the serenity of mind
that comes of writing for a beautiful girl,

with all the confidence of his failures.
Tired he is. But in him still
the fire to discover burns.

Translated by the poet and Michael Hulse