8/14/2019 Nihat Ziyalan

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/nihat-ziyalan 1/1

THE ECHO

Nihat Ziyalan

My ears cannot take it anymore;

The voices coming from deep inside me,Without rhyme or reason.

Are they from the timesWhen I was first slapped,

Or I fell down from a horse

and broke my arm?

Is it my scream,

When my toenail hit a rock and broke off?

Are they the wordsOf the girl I took home in a carriage

After a literary event,Who said: “You’re the first one

To kiss me after my mom”?

Or the words I couldn’t utter,“It is the same for me”?

Is that the voiceOf the falling tree

When my father heard the death of my brother?

His coffin was made of the same tree!Alongside my mother’s cloth-wrapped head,

With a pitcher full of tears;

A pine scented voiceAbove the carriage going beyond the Tauruses!

Are these the voices?I wove with the yarn of forbearance,

That kept clashing and turned into echoes,

When I took to the roads to go to faraway places.

I don’t know how

I can stop them

Before they turn into an avalanche.

 

Translated by Nilűfer Mizano lu Reddyǧ(Original published in Varlık , March 2009, p. 13)