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Poetry

Offering II

By Ece Temelkuran
Translated from Turkish by Deniz Perin

You are earth. You lie beneath everything.
Everything is above you. Even the earth’s crust.

You are water.
You are afraid of and for the stones you will strike as you flow.
You stop for fear that the stone’s skin will be scraped.
Go on, flow.
You’ll stop if the stone bleeds.
If you fear pain, you’ll exhaust yourself.

You are air. Wind curves inside you.
Whereas you are invisible.
Blow.
Even if no trace of you remains, plane trees remember every breeze.

O reader! Me? I am like this, too.
I may not know it yet:
I am just like you.
You must believe me, believe people.
For there are no kindhearted gods!

And that is why, though we may be
Water, earth, air, and we may each be a universe,
We appear as somebody among the crowds.
So now,
From here, you can set out again, on your own journey.

English

You are earth. You lie beneath everything.
Everything is above you. Even the earth’s crust.

You are water.
You are afraid of and for the stones you will strike as you flow.
You stop for fear that the stone’s skin will be scraped.
Go on, flow.
You’ll stop if the stone bleeds.
If you fear pain, you’ll exhaust yourself.

You are air. Wind curves inside you.
Whereas you are invisible.
Blow.
Even if no trace of you remains, plane trees remember every breeze.

O reader! Me? I am like this, too.
I may not know it yet:
I am just like you.
You must believe me, believe people.
For there are no kindhearted gods!

And that is why, though we may be
Water, earth, air, and we may each be a universe,
We appear as somebody among the crowds.
So now,
From here, you can set out again, on your own journey.

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