Judas Tree And Time

Hilmi YAVUZ

JUDAS TREE AND TIME

when roads are transformed into leaves
and leaves into roads
it's the Judas tree that encircles the promontory
waiting and waiting and waiting...
from which side of grief are you
road soiled that you are?
it was you
a rose singing, even if
you were to say, I've found the poem of poems,
in that strange turn of thought,
yearning for the poem prohibited
and bitter...

here's Time:
Time's sad hour
the World
whose slow, moiréd season disappearing
and love is henceforth sung as a yearning...
I've suddenly realized, how strange!
the lake-likeness of your face...

I'm besieged
in the nights buried in masses of snow
a vast sheet of linen
from afar, from very far
it was a poem
singing death
and singing it again...

Translated by Ender Gürol