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A LETTER FROM PIRAYE
I’m lying in the cushion in front of the window,
with a blanket on my knees,
I’ve a little fever.
Fields,
wonderful fields,
and Chamlicha hill I can see.
The weather is so calm.
Voices echo dreadfully.
They are cultivating a field next to our garden.
Two oxen,
a man draws in front,
and another man drives the plough from behind.
The earth swells.
The human hand is full of life on the earth.
I am looking in amazement.
Such a hard,
and extensive work,
how can they do it so easily
and so simply.
A large part of earth they have revived since the morning.
What will they sow I wonder.
I shall write it to you.
The evening closes in.
The crows are coming back from the school.
So people would say in my childhood.
Your daughter Leyla says the same.
It’s getting dark.
I lit the light.
Looked in the mirror.
A woman whose husband is in prison looks in the mirror
always, very frequently.
She needs it more than any woman
she is afraid of getting old.
She wants to be admired by the man she loves
when he gets out,
even if there are thirty years to go,
no matter!
The woman in the mirror is not old yet,
her hair is red
and her eyes
sometimes green
sometimes honey coloured.
tr. by Fuat Engin