A PALE ROSE WHEN I TOUCH Poem by Behçet Necatigil

Many like her end up here
Yet no passer-by cares
I bend down and pick her up
She becomes a pale rose when I touch.

Wandering in one of those big cities
Among the crowd at bus stops
Or in a far-off corner of the country,
In a café or in a hotel
Wherever she goes at these late hours
She hides her hands in her pockets
Flowing slowly among the
Cigarettes and papers
I bend down and pick her up, she becomes no one
But a pale rose when I touch.

Or in the wiped off lipstick
Of a lonesome girl
As she rests her head on the pillows
On the edge of the weary night.

Sometimes even in the middle of the day she sidles up
Mostly in fall you know when a cloud descends
and it rains, in that cloud of sorrow
I reach out and pick her up, she becomes no one
But a pale rose when I touch.

In hands, between the lips, in wild scripts
She is caught by the night nets
panting like a wounded animal
smothered, wanting to flee
Through the roads through memories.

Again and again I bring her back, all night she lies awake,
Tosses and turns in the dark and becomes
A pale rose when I touch.