BEDRİ RAHMİ EYÜPOĞLU : THE SAGA OF ISTANBUL
BEDRİ RAHMİ EYÜPOĞLU - 1913 - 1975 THE SAGA OF ISTANBUL Say Istanbul and a sagull comes to mind Half silver and half foam, half fish and half bread। Say Istanbul and a fable commes to mind The old wives tale that we have all heard। Say Istanbul and a mighty Steamsship comes to mind Whose songs are sung in the mudhaked huts of Anatolia: Milk flows from her taps, roes bloom on her masts; In the dreams of my childhood in Anatolia’s mudbaked huts I'd sail on her to Istanbul and back। Say Istanhul and mottled grapes come to mind With three candles burning bright on the basket- Suddenly along comes a girl so ruthlessly female So Iovely to look at that you gasp, Her lips ripe with grape honey, A girl luscious and lustful from top to toe Southern wind and willow branch and the dance of joy- As the song goes 'Like a ship at sea My heart is tossed and wrecked again.' Say Istanbul and the Grand Bazaar comes to mind: Bethoven's Ninth hand in hand with the Algerian March; And an immaculate bridal bedroom set Is auctioned off withnut the bride and groom. A shabby lute inlaid with mother of pearl Recalls the famous lutanist on old records. American cowboys Brandish candlesticks and hookahs and rusty Persian swords- "Hands up!' American sailors wear lily-white uniforms Plucked from a huge daisy, clear as milk, clean as a cloud Death looks ugly on so pure a white, But when they fight They put their combat uniforms on - Colour of blood and gunpowder and smoke- Which gather hate but no dirt. Say Istanbul and huge fisheries come to mind Stretched like a rusty cobweb over the Bosphorus Or sprawling off the Marmara coast. Forty tunnies roll in the fishery like forty millstones. The tunny after all is the shah of the sea- You shoot it in the eye with a rifle and fell it like a tree, Then suddenly the face of the fishery gets bloodshot, The emerald waters are muddied in the turmoil. With forty tunnies at a clip, the skipper is spellbound for joy. A seagull perched on the mast catches a mackerel in mid-air and gobbles it, Then it flies away without waiting for one more; The fisherman smiles kindly; ‘That gull’s Marika,’he says, ‘That’s the way she comes and goes, always.’ Say Istanbul and the Princes’Island come to mind Where the French language is murdered By sixty matrons very pleased with themselves. If the pine trees in lonely places had a tongue What tales they'd have to tell! Say Istanbul and towers come to mind: If I paint one, the other are jealous. Leander's Tower ought to know better: She should marry the Galata Tower and breed little towerlets. Say Istanbul and a waterfront comes to mind: Anatolia's poor forsaken huddled masses land In its coffee houses day after day. Some must beg to survive but shame keeps them away; Some manage a broom and sweep the streets, Their faces smeared with a filthy fusty grin; Other shoulder a pannier or an ornate back saddle, And they get lost in the city's hubbub and fiddle-faddle. Tied legs wobbly under the weight, melting like wax, They pant and heave, drenched in sweat. A gentle porter is a must for a fragile item. Do tender hands value a piano the way the porter does? Suddenly a mushy song blares on the radio across the street: The most popular crooner of them all, His voice smudged with the greasy perfumes of Arabia: 'Life is full of joys and sorrows, They come and go.' Say Istanbul and a stadium comes tn mind Where twenty-five thousand voices under the sun Sing our national anthem in unison And the clouds are fried like cannonballs. I melt in the sunlight of the crowds, I rejoice in their song I would pluck my heart like a poppy for them, should they ask. ...Say Istanbul and Yahya Kemal once came to mind; Nowadays it's Orhan Veli whose name is on the tip of every tongue: His flair' and flamboyance, his poems and his face Hover overhead like a wounded pigeon Which descends quietly to perch on this poem. ॥Say Istanbul and Sait Faik comes to mind: Pepples twitter on the shore of Burgaz Island, While a blue-eyed boy grows up in circles of joy A blue-eyed old fisherman grows younger and tinier, When they reach the same height they turn into Sait And they roam the city hand in hand, Cursing beast and bird, friend and foe alike; On Sharp Island they gather gulls' eggs, By midnight they're in the red light district, In the morning they go through Galata; At the cafe they tease a harmless lunatic, Hey, Hasan,' they say, 'you're holding your paper upside down.' They set the poor chap's newspaper on fire, Then they sit and weep quietly. ...The blue-eyed boy doesn't give a damn,But the old fisherman broods like hell;And a green venom bursts out of the sea. Piercing the heart that feels, ravaging the mind that knows. The little blue-eyed boy And the old fisherman And that green venom smeared all over our lips... So long as Istanbul throbs alive in the sea, So long as language lives, so will Sait’s poetry. Say Istanbul and a gipsy woman comes to mind With a bunch of flowers taller than herself, Wherever the spring comes from, so does she. She is the sun and the soil from top to toe, And a mother matchless among mothers: One child on her back, one at her breast, one in her belly. Devil may care, her life has flair: She roams the city from one end to the other, She is humble, she sells tongs, she bellydances, 'What about two bob, dear?' she says, 'You want me to tell your fortune; love?' Till the day she dies, she tells nothing but lies. She tells you the dream she had the night before: 'I see a yellow snake, son-of a-bitch keeps pestering me, I wake up and what do I see? My little ones are on the edge of the bed sucking my tores.' Say Istanhul and a textile factory comes to mind: High walls, long counters, tall stoves... Tender slender girls toil all day long on their feet, Sweating blood and tears. Their faces long their hands long their days long In the factory the windows are near the ceiling Red-heeled fair-skinned girls - 'No loitering, girls!' Out there the trees stretch row on row Walls, walls endless walls Why do you cut us off from the trees From the amber fields and the purple streets Where the fair season rumbles and tumbles. A nineteen-year-old working mother Is dazzled by the white foamy flow of silk. But printed silk is no good for nappies Now if she could get a roll of ivory-white calico She could do so much with it: curtains, sheets, underwear. The thought of ivory-white calico makes her eyes sparkle. When she dies giving birth to a third son She is still longing for a roll of calico. Young mothers like her are sixpence a dozen At the factory somebody else takes her place That's the way it is: if one goes, another comes. Azrael, may you get your just reward. Say Istanbul and a barge comes to mind Loaded with onions, painted poison-green on coral-red Sailing in from the Black Sea ports winter and summer With one more patch on its filthy sail each time And the rust of its iron rods on our tongue Its motors speeding along our pulsebeat into our hearts A mermaid with huge scale-covered buttocks. Say Istanbul and barges come to mind Humble wanderers on the high seas With names like The Sea Tiger or The Triumphant Sword. सा Istanbul and Sinan the Great Architect comes to mind His ten fingers soaring like mighty plane trees On the skyline Then row upon row of shacks and shanties where smoke filth and blight rutlessly spread. Our city suckles dwarfs at her giant's breasts