Talat on a Rope
By Alexander Dawe
talat on a rope
in the asylum garden
as a eunuch in the
gulistan clips
roses
the grand vizier looks out
a dark window
an odalisque cries in the
the seraglio and
a capillary is the
rose-written
kingdom of god
on a rope, swaying
in balat a coppersmith
hammers hard,
heyhat
hayat
talat
sings odes to
houris and hours
in this desperate hour
when the smell of do
is spoken word fractured into
worlds, analysis or
CBT, CBT, CBT
a language in me
yaltak lan
dın dın dın
went the heartbeat in halat
dın dın dın
went the echo
at the end of the line
*
Alexander Dawe has translated many contemporary Turkish novels, including Endgame by Ahmet Altan and Women Who Blow on Knots by Ece Temelkuran. In collaboration with Maureen Freely he has translated A Useless Man by Sait Faik Abasıyanık, The Time Regulation Institute by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar, which received the MLA Lois Roth Award, and Madonna in a Fur Coat by Sabahattin Ali. In 2010, he received a PEN/Heim translation Fund grant to translate the short stories of Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar. He lives and works on one of the Prince’s Islands in Istanbul.