The Mediterranean is in harmony with you Poem by Can Yücel

The Mediterranean is in harmony with you
The stars sweat and you are sweating too
The same wet sparkle is on your nostrils
The noise of the motor boats does not stop
The dogs bark in the distance
A moment ago a child cried
A sheet is being shaken out from Fatma's window
Ali Dumdum is swearing for hours on end
The fishermen beat the sea
These sounds are like the earth swelling the silence
It is the silence garrulous of your geraniums

We lay on the veranda last night
the offshore summer breeze above us
My hands still smell of thyme
It was as though I didn't sleep with you
but was wandering the mountains

I learned from you how to write of the sea
The blue pencil is always in my hand
Like a fishing boat goes out on a trip
my teacher wife goes to school
I open out behind her
tracing a north wind in my exercise book
There is an island that is just shearwaters
it turns and turns in my head
The days I've lived with you
became a silver circle
when your sun touched my life

I found at last that smugglers' cave
as you dazzled my eyes open
Death is perhaps like washing
in those dark waters stolen from you,
greener than seaweed when still,
but blue after blue soaring with every fathom
I thought my losses, my débris, my alcoholic works
all belonged to this flat world
How was I to know I was on the peak of my happiness
I understood when I went out with you
You know those ancient Greek horses
with their curly manes
the trees with their projections are like them
when the day turns to evening
The Balan Peaks march
companies of souls march
towards the wholeness of beauty

My woman
you are in harmony with the Mediterranean

Translated by Richard McKane and Feyyaz Kayacan Fergar