Turk
Derin Kutlay
With thanks to Prof. Jody Maxmin
GREEK
Half-man and half-horse: Muse, over there, a centaur but li’l too coarse.
Squanders away tetrapod gift of sacred, sacked Constantinople:
Greek thought, phrase Latin, no, Arab numeral, Farsi moral…
When in the worst trouble, recites he shaman’s songs from the cradle.
What he seeks as best, on his arrival will be condemned foul fraud.
No fit astronomer Chiron’s anti-kin; did Zeus fix the guide star?
I ask regardless: is part of the journey cognition, or is
He plague’s porter? Shall we dig a grave, polis to fit, potters’
Wheel in Kerameikos kick start, model for krater to mark or kouros?
We ask: what curve, phrenic, first did bid Daedalus break the flank, concave,
Free from wrist? Carved us trim, slender; trimmed off ruler’s chin cartouche?
Our sails he trimmed away from Ma’at, Kemetian, set ship’s bow to
Mode, Egyptian. This is our fissure: He ‘trimmed’ the arm of Cervantes!
O, but if he had any respect for rhyme, he’d never turn up!
Full contempt would bring a rider with eyes poked out, as sun strikes noon,
To us his own self prosodically introduce. Purblind while
We were preening still: purple ringed, scarlet embroidered, wrists emerald.
CALLIOPE
No slander. I, just, of gold, lyre, knife and shrub: anima mundi,
psychè kósmou. I need doer and deed; bad, good. Myself,
I am a usurer. Newborns my caress makes noctilucent
We go / they come / Ithaka / here appear / though dead / alive.
Giants thus equal the known atom. What of many men in whom I
rouse instant’s fever and so condemn to infinity’s stupor?
Take canon off the shelf, strike a match, load, shoot like cannonball, ‘head!
Only now mastered looks the Acropolis. Speak, sister, on this.
CLIO
Clio, virgin reversal’s! Tick tock runs the true epic meter!
I don’t circle dance, first with Melpomene, tempo grave,
Partner switch to sister farcical, tracing horizon aligned eight.
I don’t play dice, count in repeat to perfect six. Bang bang!
Say, to whom shrapnel sounds like sweet buzzing bee, hexagon stuck?
I don’t pay no architect save dynamite, stake out
No geometric shape for my battleground. Artful find me?
Do I need to be vulgar? I will, with great pleasure! Hear how
I deal barbarically with love, where I sole deal blows
Like Achilles to Penthesilea, mayhem persuaded.
Thetis, indeed, your Homeric child wrote me! Dipped into ink
Dark blood red my quill aglow metal, straight on bone whet its sharp tip!
What aspirational normality permits, ponder: perverse blows
Betwixt reverse genders, by foamy Aphrodite’s night-kit spear knighted.
My bold suitor with more gut than causality, you slight.
Alala! You, Greek, started der Prozess, but don’t expect to end.
I shall consume crumbs of ruin in arbitrary manner. Humean
Reason cannot satisfy hunger Korybantic, berserk, frantic.
MELPOMENE
What blow! What man can bound me to page, gyve me to stage?
I am the hydra that snakes ’round life, bye, god-gifted pithos!
You emasculate me to warned misstep, Greek, as if! Theta
I resolve to soak in black no blind could against counsél!
Dawn and dusk, wailing of boy, pre-pubescent, tolls: his land’s pain-clock.
Most gen’rous agalma… Gone me deaf? Why do I have yet to thank?
O’erstepping, I wish him life under star of luck he befits: Archer.
Night that is by one sun older; well-founded interpreter, blue eyed
my sister dear, starry heavens’. I’ve tears! Take them as oil
To ebb and flow, glide your fate-makers fixed to this brand new pose.
GREEK to OURANIA
Two men of all who walked the Earth ever cried Eureka
Why, compare! I let one origin be Syracuse: Archimedes,
Nature’s exhauster, sand’s contender, spiral’s unsnarler. Ironed
Out sphere that’s small riddling world, though boardless and chalkless. A huge splash!
Who planned a soaking ambush to schoolchildren, tomorrow’s brides?
Pushed himself through soapy still immersion, grabbed marble tub sides wet,
From sunken state leapt across slippery suds? Ran naked up cobbles
Toothed and stabby; dumbstruck old age looked from behind vigor’s raised dust.
Taught our age proof by rigor, laws beyond legislature.
I hear Clio’s jeer: ‘His death sure was an equal in honor!’
You have disturbed him, and what? ‘Yet it moves!’ Hark! I continue on.
Later an eccentric off-axis threw man, gladly forgotten
Would be now, had him cosmos not post-mortem inflated.
What, Tragedy, do you murmur?
————————————-‘Know well that he is dear to me,
Maven of fair misery. Please, he has a name, then pronounce it.’
Polymaths’ poseur, pondering posers, penned poetically: Poe’s
Postulates. Pouting’s pixie ‘Pomene, pleased?
—————————————————————Ourania!
Savor from my Athens’ famed justice your sister, who this man favors,
You judges to be plain undeserving! The full truth, I swear.
He callously lectured ‘gainst your wise methods, speech jesterly Eureka
titled. Said nature must be grasped intuitively, as it was built.
Sowed the thick vines tangling you in today’s knots: your Big Bang birth and
your Big Crunch scythe, why night’s sky darkens despite twinkling bright eyes.
Made Aristotle a fine laughingstock; called foreigner, sneezing,
Hailing from barbarous neighbor’s realm! Further disgrace we won’t stand.
Poet of crows soon died, drunkenly maimed by manic crowd.
————————————————————————————Turk!
Do not to be myself aspire and aspire out your cage;
Pretender! See what my gods make of them who wish this to change.
Chios bid: “I’ll chew your flesh and blow your hole if the olden
tree isn’t by birds’ time milked of tears: tragedy, if not, brute force.”
Occhiali – Ischian ships could crown, raise Nestor’s wine cup –
Pasha ruling in Samos! Thessaloniki’s own child
– I cut with seashells his cord, the Aegean once rocked his crib to sleep! –
He seized mama, impaled her through with six bolts. Fresh milk paled blood.
I am surrounded, squared, cornered. Styx snakes dreaded down the valley. Old
——–wolf
Whose cross I foresaw, now nine vulture round. I praise the
Deep. Say goodbye to me, to Greece you are losing.
TURK
Complied to all mothers’ wants, like your Kleobis of Argos.
My wise man thinks himself no more than oxen, as Biton.
When she bid me cage and kill brother with teeth yet ingrown
Who buried us side by side, but Sophocles’ lawful bride?
Did you think our guns were game, tombs the white lambs led to grass?
Because I kill well, have you taken me to live badly?
I end my song thus: ‘good men rode away on horses fair,
Now lament: they left us with bronze for steel, bastards for men.’
You are mad because what you have thought on for so long has now in front of you materialized.
And it is nothing like you imagined! But it is life’s will that we will all be proven wrong.
Where the gods fear to descend, Chaos, we, humans, live with strong coffee and Turkish delight.
Derin Kutlay writes from Ankara, Turkey. She studied Physics with a Classics minor at Stanford University. Her work has appeared in The Chamber Magazine and The Quarter(ly), and is forthcoming in true. You can find her at www.derinkutlay.com
Back to Table of Contents for Translation and Transition