The Moon Is Dark

by Ahmed Arif (Turkish original – Ankara, Turkey)
by David Selim Sayers and Evrim Emir-Sayers (English translation – Paris, France)

THIS translation is of the poem “Ay Karanlık” by the Kurdish-Turkish poet Ahmed Arif (1923-1991). You can hear it performed by Ahmed Arif himself at this link.

Into the blue
Into the blue steal your eyes
Into the blue of a fire
Raging against the wind
If I’m blind
If I’m leaving behind all but you
So what if I’m through?
This life is mine, this dream is mine
Strangers have no clue
Come, I say,
The moon is dark…

If I end at your gate
Starved as a cur
Stripped as a snake
Wounded and cursed
With my loving, my need
My insatiable greed
What, then, could compete?
Come what may
The scribes all unite
My sentence to write
Come, I pray,
The moon is dark…

Bastards’ lairs to all my sides
They look like friends
Smile like friends
Light their cigarettes off mine
Kiss my cheek
Like worms they sneak
Bastards’ lairs to all my sides
To all my sides, dead ends
Craving for death in the leyliest night,
Don’t stay away,
The moon is dark…

Also by Ahmed Arif:

• Thirty-Three Bullets