Since was Thrown Inside

Since I was thrown inside
           the earth has gone around the sun ten times.
If you ask it:
                    That’s nothing—
                                a microscopic span.”
If you ask me:
                    “Ten years of my life!”
I had a pencil
                    the year I was thrown inside.
It lasted me a week.
If you ask it:
                    “A whole lifetime!”
If you ask me:
                    “What’s a week?”

Since I’ve been inside
            Osman did his seven-and-a-half
                       for manslaughter and left,
                       knocked around on the outside for a while,
                       then landed back inside for smuggling,
                       served six months, and got out again;
                       yesterday we had a letter—he’s married,
                       with a kid coming in the spring.

They’re ten years old now
            the children born
                        the year I was thrown inside.
And that year’s foals, shaky on their spindly long legs,
            have been wide-rumped, contented mares for some time.
But the olive seedlings are still saplings,
                                  still children.

New squares have opened in my far-off city
                                  since I was thrown inside.
And my family now lives
            in a house I haven’t seen
                       on a street I don’t know.

Bread was like cotton, soft and white,
                       the year I was thrown inside.
Then it was rationed,
and here inside men killed
                             for a fist-sized black loaf.

Now it’s free again
but dark and tasteless.

The year I was thrown inside
            the SECOND hadn’t started yet.

The ovens at Dachau hadn’t been lit,
nor the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Time flowed like blood from a child’s slit throat.
Then that chapter was officially closed.
Now the American dollar talks of a THIRD.

Still, the day has gotten lighter
                                since I was thrown inside.
And “at the edge of darkness,
            pushing against the earth with their heavy hands,
                                  THEY’ve risen up” halfway.
 
Since I was thrown inside
           the earth has gone around the sun ten times.
And I repeat with the same passion
           what I wrote about THEM
                      the year I was thrown inside:
“They who are numberless like ants in the earth,
                                                  fish in the sea,
                                                         birds in the air,
who are cowardly, brave,
                       ignorant, wise,
                                             and childlike,
and who destroy
           and create,
my songs tell only of their adventures,”
                                   And anything else,
                                              such as my ten years here,
                                                   is just so much talk.

Tr. from the Turkish by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk