Two Poems
Translated by Oğul Köseoğlu and Lydia Host
The Wound
Originally by Küçük İskender
Blind spots are in every love
People are born with this fault, shouldn’t die for it
There, the one left with that little thing
Cries for life’s infinitude
Who will hold that hand once more
This wound becomes a dream, bleeding within,
Becomes, this once, a woman explaining her love
To death, at the end of a fairy tale
Never speaks, sometimes laughs, goes silent
The leaf trembles with pain, the dream ignites
There, in that beautiful sleep, the sorrow
Grows into a spell’s infinitude
Küçük İskender was an openly gay poet who lived in or near Istanbul until his death in 2019, at the age of 55.
Ache
Originally by Birhan Keskin
From that day on, I never had a beautiful phrase to say
for the world. My dreams have been foggy, since the tulle and guns.
A winding absentminded path, on the path an old stone,
A boat tied to the dock, a mossy rope; like them, I have stayed.
An open sea far from me, she walked away.
An abandoned house on the shore, a creaking wooden wharf over a narrow channel,
A tire on the wharf, a little distance off, an orange buoy,
A memory of the north reflecting within me, I hit the still water.
In a black and white square, it is, all in all, a memory
You left, I forgot, I was forgotten.
Where I broke you, they broke me too,
With no phrase can I cry you away, now.
Birhan Keskin is an openly lesbian poet who has received numerous honors in Turkey.
Oğul and Lydia are a translating duo whose work is forthcoming from The Southern Review.
Oğul Köseoğlu is a bisexual translator and interpreter living in Turkey. He studied American literature in Ankara and Comparative literature in Istanbul. He has published translations of American poets into Turkish and in 2013 published his translation of David Damrosch's What Is World Literature. His work is also forthcoming from The Southern Review. His website is www.ogulkoseoglu.com.
Lydia Host is a trans woman, poet and writer living in Philadelphia. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Southern Review, Oyster River Pages, The Woven Tale Press, and numerous other magazines. Much of it can be found at her website, www.lydiasthost.com, and via her Instagram handle, @lydiahost1.