Two Loves

Two loves can’t exist in one heart.
What a lie—
it happens all the time.

Tonight in this cold, rainy city
I’m lying on my back in my hotel,
staring at the ceiling.
Cloud croos it
slowly, like trucks passing on the wet asphalt,
and far off to the rigt
               a gold needle shines at the top
                              of a white building
maybe a hundred stories tall.
Clouds cross the ceiling
filled with the sun, like watermelon boats.
I’m sitting in a bay window,
the light off the water hitting my face-
a river or the sea?

What’s on that tray
with the roses—
wild strawberries or black mulberries?
Am I in a field of  jonquils
or a snowy beech grove?
The women I love are laugh and cry
                                             in two languages.
Friends, what brought you together?
You don’t know each other.
Where do you wait for me—
at the Sycamore Cafe in Beyazıt, or in Gorki Park?
Tonight in this cold, rainy city
I’m Iying on my back in my hotel.
My eyes burn, wide-open

I hear a tune
harmonicas started end with a lute.
My longings for two distant cities
get all tangled up inside me.

To jump out of bed
and run through the rain
to the station:
“Drive, engineer—
                              Brother, take me there!”
“Where?”

17 July 1959
Tr. from the Turkish by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk