THE DERVISH Poem by Behçet Necatigil

On the asphalt plains walks the dervish
Over falling shop shutters forever
Linger the fountains of sorrow: lamps.

First slowly like a flowing skin bag
from tigresses of old, it glides up to our shores
and the first bedouin leaps up and enters our tent.

Where then is leyla, and where is aslı?
Raids and plunders and leyla!
The dervish hurls himself into the ferhat mountains -
There must be a lighthouse somewhere ahead.

Weary boats returning to shallow waters
Searching for the old quenched lighthouse
They cannot see for fire and tobacco smoke -
A voice rings out in the darkness: the rocks, the rocks!

Even in the ages when fire was first found
The lamps still burned as they do now,
Then later on the asphalt plains
Came the floods and the dervish.