Güntürk Üstün | Mediterranean Poetry

Raised in Izmir by the Aegean Coast, Mr Güntürk Üstün, a retired medical doctor, a poet, a long-time maritime, railroad and aviation fan has lived in Istanbul for the past 23 years and he currently works on his new books of poetry [He has written and published 6 books (all in Turkish) until now]. His poems have been published in various literary journals and anthologies in Turkey as well as in a English language poetry website called Mediterranean Poetry (www.odyssey.pm) based in Sweden. Mr Üstün is fluent both in English and French.

INVENTORY FOR A JOURNEY

Lined up, big and small, cargo liners and oil tankers, lined up, waiting,
Waiting eagerly to get loaded, unloaded, right away, in port toward evening,
And wanderlust fills the skies of our gray eyes with driving rains,
And travelling schemes unleash like whips, like wind, from gray corrugations
Of our brains, though we don’t have traffic control’s schedule, which is the future,
Nor the ship’s log, which is the past, only the sea-farer’s scripture:

Let’s depart on time, man, or someday we’ll pay for it! But why are we on the road
All the time? Why can’t we get rid of our suitcases? And why, shooting our
precious load
To seduce precious women, do we then deprive them of our precious presence?
Shall we say we love to wear out rail lines, oceans and female brine just to
know ourselves?
Shall we say we can not take a step further when it comes to truly
revealing ourselves?
Remembering that our days are numbered leads us to betray ourselves

With lack of sleep. The diesel’s roar from a locomotive or engine room of ship
Comprises lullabies. Our job is not just fooling around, nor is an adventurous trip
A hobby, nor is the cunning we need to avoid getting the shaft, and putting
Ourselves in your position. Please understand, we are not accustomed to settling
Down for very long. On the road, when there’s time, we keep diaries that include
Long lonely poems. Loneliness is natural, known by all and but not much loved.

It’s a shame the railroad manager and the port governor’s daughters are already
Married, or we’d give them a toss. White as seagulls, black as ravens,
our minds are rude
And poorly behaved. We never get tired of inhaling the sky’s white brandy to trick
The mind into forgetting the wild future, hole up in hotel rooms when all this
makes us sick.
In the bar downstairs we sip young wines much coveted by old sailors like us,
Old rail hands. Ocean and train weather shelters us from our gnawing nostalgias

Yet our empty and waiting houses dance in our eyes with dawn’s promise to return.
To tell you the truth, our dreams are on fire, and life does not always want to burn.
To call a spade a spade, death does not sneak through our nightmares’ doors,
It gallops as if determined to fly, or like poetry’s totally insane, winged horse.
Yet once in a while death’s strange pangs and peals twine its knots in
our vital spots,
And deadly heaviness, nausea, spasm or both, arise from heart or the guts.

Let’s count down the minutes before we reach ground zero. Keep up your
peckers, dudes!
The axe is coming, and the whirlpool of time to deposit us on the beaches
of the equinox.

Güntürk Üstün
© translation: Nesrin Eruysal & Kenneth Rosen

I’LL TAKE A FERRY RIDE AND CROSS TO THE OTHER SIDE

In the pitch-dark tar sky there are countless stars I am not used to seeing,
Yet where the platinum-blonde full moon hides speaks to the mystery of being.
In my ears baritone songs of the ships’ whistles harmonize with February’s
northeast wind.
In my nostrils I inhale the fresh scent of a rough sea smelling of iodine, salt, moss
and sin.
I have come to realize I will never have a night such as this ever again.
Still I want to see for myself the different atmosphere on the other shore.
I’ll take a ferry ride and cross to to the other side if at this hour of night it’s
still open, the dark harbor.

What has changed? The skin color of sun-tanned beauties and the makes of
sports cars.
What hasn’t changed? Manuals of guaranteed seduction for hormonally unstable
young men seeing stars.
I danced in a delirium of slow lukewarm songs in night clubs, private homes,
public bars.
My youth is crying out to me from the streets of a far away bay city now mindless,
romantic things.
I seem to understand the night’s dishonest summons to disastrous hot flings.
Still I want to see for myself the different atmosphere on the other shore
I’ll take a ferry ride and cross to to the other side if at this hour of night it’s
still open, with its purple lights, the dark harbor.

Why I’m still so despondent, down and out despite my many good intentions.
I heard wrath
In the words of men of wisdom and I shut my ears to them when I chose my path
I regret making mistakes, more than the things I didn’t do. I regret
hare-brained schemes.
I made a habit of lounging under the ruins of huge castles I built from the sands of
perfumed dreams.
After tonight, I feel that I won’t draw the unlucky card again when someone bends
to straighten her seams.
Still I want to see for myself the different atmosphere on the other shore.
I’ll take a ferry ride and cross to to the other side if at this hour of night it’s
still open, the dark harbor.

My brain keeps pressing me to delete some secret files from its memory bank.
The shrinking number of single, inviting women makes me want to dive into tank.
Even if consumed when one is all alone, two glasses of a good wine can accomplish
strange miracles.
Once it suffuses your blood wine, can make you write things that appeal to
beautiful girls.
At the end of the night, I am almost sure that I’ll lie back and reconsider this
string of wise pearls.
Meanwhile I want to see for myself the different atmosphere on the other shore.
I’ll take a ferry ride and cross to to the other side if at this hour of night it’s
still open, the dark harbor.

The woman I love doesn’t care for me at all and assures me that she never will.
She is a mountain lake, a lost city, the capital of a small country with no access to
the ocean and it never will.
Since the day I developed my habit of turning off their main shutoff point in
my brain, I tell you my tears no longer spill.
I have lost all interest in who she goes out with or whether she has by now
settled down,
Yet from time to time I hear her sweet voice whispering she will never say yes
to me, suggesting I jump in the ocean and drown.
So that pages can hypnotize me, I want to go back to my place on the other shore.
I’ll take a ferry ride and cross to to the other side if at this hour of night it’s
still open, the dark harbor.

Nesrin Eruysal is a literary scholar and translator of two books, Corporate Religion (Mediacat, 2002) and A Company of Citizens (Mediacat, 2005). She has published a number of articles that explore the relationship between literature and Jungian thought and is the author of I Wish That Jewish Doctor Had Come Earlier (Gozlem Publication Company, 2002). Her poetry translations have appeared in The Wolf (UK), Visions International, Qarrtsiluni, Söyleşi Üç Aylık Şiir Dergisi (Turkey) and Silk Road.

Kenneth Rosen worked as a Professor of English at the University of Southern Maine for many years. His first collection of poems, Whole Horse, was selected by Richard Howard for the Braziller Poetry Series. Others are The Hebrew Lion, Black Leaves, Longfellow Square, Reptile Mind, No Snake No Paradise, The Origins of Tragedy, Homo Politico and Cyprus Bad Period. He spent a sabbatical semester as Balkan Scholar at the American University in Bulgaria teaching American poetry and 20th century fiction, and returned there again as a Fulbright professor. A second Fulbright award brought him as Senior Scholar to Minya University in Upper Egypt. He also spent a year in Cyprus as a Fulbright professor. His sojourns in Eastern Europe and the Middle East have had a major impact on his teaching and writing. Widely published in America, Rosen is currently working on The Goat’s Mirror, a novel.

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Published with the permission of Güntürk Üstün, Nesrin Eruysal & Kenneth Rosen