In her latest work of poetry, How Abraham Abandoned Me, Bejan Matur again bridges oral tradition with written word, ritual with reality.
In her own words, Bejan Matur talks about her newest work, in How Abraham Abandoned Me. Born in the district of Kahramanmaraş in southeast Turkey, she earned a law degree from Ankara University Faculty of Law and has worked as a journalist, regularly publishing articles and op-ed pieces about Kurdish politics, Armenian news and culture, prison literature, and women’s issues. She is the founder and a former director of DKSV (Diyarbakır Cultural Art Foundation) and has worked with displaced children and women. After years in London and Istanbul, she resides in Berlin.
Bejan Matur
An excerpt from How Abraham Abandoned Me
‘SEVEN NİGHT
1.
Her gece kandil dedi biri
Her gece kandil
Ve hasrete daha çok var.
Neyi duymaktayız biz?
Dün oturduğumuz avluda
Siyah olan gül
Bugün açmış ruhunu
Ve bir şey göstermektedir.
Sular bir şey göstermektedir
Kuşların gülleri geçip kokan nefesi
Sesi
Senin soluğun olmaktadır hâlâ.
Buradaki her günahı temizledi
Senin güllere bakman.
Senin isteğin göğün katında tartıldı.
Bir melekten söz ederken
Şehir çok siyah,
Budur meleği yükselten belki de dedim
Meleği yükselten ve kanatlarını kelimelere açan
Şehrin siyah oluşudur.
Kuşkusuz zamandan konuşacağız.
Bir çocuğun dereyi geçerken taşıdığı yükün Bir
kız kardeş olmasından.
Ve küfürden
Olmayan anneden
Ölülerden.
Doğurmayan anneden konuşacağız
İnkârdan.
Ne çok oldu
Merak yerini titremeye bıraktı.
Zikrin bilinci kavuştu sana
Ve anne hatırlandı.
Ölüler?
Bu gecenin ve sabahın kaç ölüsü var?
Geçmişin ölümleri saymaya gelmez Çünkü
aramızdadırlar her an.
Ruhları içimizde nefes almaktadır
Onların gözleriyle parlar ve kararır sular.
“Every night is sacred,” said one
every night sacred
there will be many more nights of longing.
And we, what do we hear?
In the courtyard where we sat yesterday
the rose that was black
opened its soul today, a revelation.
And the waters a revelation.
The fragrant divine breath
of birds flying past the rose
and their voice
is your breath still in the making.
When you look at the rose
every sin here is cleansed.
Your desire was weighed in heaven.
When I speak of an angel
the city is utterly black,
I spoke of an angel
“and perhaps,” I said,
“the black nature of the city
exalts the angel
and opens its wings to words.”
Undoubtedly we’ll talk of time,
of the burden the child carried across the stream,
of a sister,
of a curse,
of an absent mother,
of the dead.
We’ll talk of a mother who didn’t give birth
of denial.
So much happened
Trembling replaced trouble.
Enlightenment came
and you remembered the mother.
And the dead?
How many dead this night and morning?
Impossible to count the deaths of the past
for every moment they are with us.
Their souls breathe within us
the waters gleam and darken with their eyes.
2.
Yalnız Yalnız
Bir bahçe.
Bahçede unuttuğu
Masumiyet
Tavaf
Tavaf
Tavaf
Ey insan
Tavaf edildiğinde
Kalan
Varlıktır.
Gecedir.
In a garden
of forgotten innocence
circling
round and round
O human creature
when the circle is completed
what remains
is Self.
And night.
