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THE STORY OF BLACK SNAKE
(A FRAGMENT FROM HUMAN LANDSCAPES)
The people of Antep are fighters.
They can hit a flying crane in the eye,
a running rabbit in its hind leg.
And on their Arabian horses
they sit tall and slim as young green cypresses.
Antep is a hot
hard place.
The people of Antep are fighters,
the people of Antep are brave.
Black Snake
before he became Black Snake,
worked in one of the Antep villages.
Maybe he had a good life,
maybe not.
(They didn't leave him time to think about it.)
He lived like a field mouse,
scared as a field mouse.
"Bravery" comes with land, guns, and horses.
He didn't have any horses, guns, or land.
Black Snake
had the same twig-thin neck
and the same big head
before he became Black Snake...
When the heathens entered Antep,
the people of Antep
flushed him out saklayan
of the pistachio tree
where he'd hidden in fear.
They put a horse under him
and a Mauser
in his hand.
Antep is a hard place.
Green lizards
on red rocks.
And hot clouds pacing the sky
back and forth...
The heathens held the hills.
They had artillery.
The people of Antep
were hemmed in on the flat plain.
The heathens' shrapnel fell like rain.
It dug up the earth by the roots.
The heathens held the hills.
The blood of Antep flowed. kanıydı.
Black Snake
took cover behind a rosebush
before he became Black Snake.
The bush was so scrawny,
and his head so big and his fear so great,
that he lay flat on his belly
with his gun still empty...
Antep is a hot
hard place.
The people of Antep are fighters,
the people of Antep are brave.
But the heathens had artillery.
Nothing could be done, it was fate :
the people of Antep would have to surrender
the flat plain to the heathens.
Before he became Black Snake,
Black Snake didn't really care
if the heathens held Antep till doomsday.
Because he had never been taught to think.
He lived on the earth like a field mouse,
scared as a field mouse.
His cover was a rosebush.
He was lying under the rosebuch, flat on his belly,
when behind a white rock
a black snake
raised its head -
skin all spangled,
eyes fire-red,
tongue forked.
Suddenly a bullet
tore off its head.
The snake collapsed.
Black Snake
before he became Black Snake,
saw the black snake's end
and shouted out
the first thought of his life :
"Take heed, mad heart -
Death found the black snake behind the white rock
and will find you out even inside a steel box..."
And he who'd lived like a field mouse,
scared as a field mouse,
sprang into action.
The people of Antep were awed
and quickly fell in behind him.
They made mincemeat of the heathens in the hills.
And he who'd lived like field mouse,
scared as a field mouse,
became "Black Snake". :
tr. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk