Moon Rise & Other Poems
By Ahmet Haşim
Translated by Donny Smith
Moon Rise
This emptiness fills with a strange clamoring:
Noises and vexed shriekings, over-excited;
On the lake unseen, birds all at once take flight ...
Why this fright, why this sudden over-flow?
On the horizon, leaning against the water’s quivering ring,
On the horizon, for the moon manifests to drink …
Tulû’-ı Kamer
Dağıldı cevf-i havâliye bir garîb âvâz:
Gürültüler, asabî sayhalarla, cûşâcuş ;
Bütün tuyûr-ı hafâ gölden ettiler pervâz …
Neden bu korku, neden ansızın bu cûş u hurûş?
Ufukda, çenber-i lerzân-ı âba yaslanmış,
Ufukda çünkü tecellî-i mâh eder suyu nûş …
1913
Swans
In the water, weary manifestations
Glow, an approach:
Breasts opening in the night, eyes drunken,
The swans arrive,
As though ships laden with laughter
And built of stars …
Kuğular
Suda yorgun, muzî tecelliler
Ediyor bir takarrübü ifşâ :
Kuğular, leyl içinde, sîne-küşâ
Geliyor, gözlerinde mestîler ;
Sanki mahmûl-i hande keştîler
Ki olunmuş nücûmden inşâ ..
1912
Swans’ Return
On the dead surface of the water
so clear … quiver, quiver of splendor …
to reach the moon’s enchanted land
they seek the heavens’ way …
Kuğuların Avdeti
Ölü bir sath-ı âbın üstünde
Ki celî, lerze lerze, dârâtı ,
Sihr-âbâd-ı mâha gitmek için
Arıyorlar reh-i semâvâtı …
1913
To the Reader
My suffering is a single bright way
Opened for you, between mystery
And dark forest land.
In the night of this book, O reader,
I have laid out moonlight for you.
Kari’e
Muzlim şeceristan arasında
Esrar ile yekpare münevver
Bir yoldur açılmış sana derdim
Kari bu kitabın gecesinde
Mehtabı seninçün yere serdim
1926
Preface
In the waters of the pool of imagination
I have observed the forms of life.
Thus the trees and stones of this earth
Are to me only multi-colored reverberation.
Mukaddime
Seyreyledim ekâl-i hayatı
Ben havz-ı hayâlin sularında ,
Bir aks-i mülevvendir anınçün
Arzın bana ahcâr ü nebâtı .
1921
Ahmet Haşim was born in Baghdad in 1887 to an old Ottoman family. In 1898, he was sent to Istanbul to learn Turkish and receive an Ottoman education. He became interested in French and Ottoman poetry at the Sultanî (Galatasaray) High School and published his first poem in 1901. His first poetry collection, Göl Saatleri (Lake Hours), was published in 1921 and his second collection, Piyale (Wineglass), in 1926. He died in Istanbul in 1933. His poetry was influential in introducing new forms and imagery into late Ottoman and early Turkish poetry, and he is often cited as a forebear by Turkish poets today.
Donny Smith was born in Nebraska but teaches at a high school in Istanbul. Books he has translated include Pigeonwoman by Cemal Süreya (with A. Karakaya), I Too Went to the Hunt of a Deer by Lâle Müldür and If Cutting Off the Head of the Gorgon by Wenceslao Maldonado.