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THE EPIC OF SHEIK BEDREDDIN (FRAGMENTS)
1.
On the divan, Bursa silk in green-branching red boughs;
a blue garden of Kutahya tiles on the wall;
wine in silver pitchers;
and lambs in copper pots roasted golden brown.
Strangling his own brother with a bowstring
- anointing himself with a gold bowl of his brother's blood -
Sultan Memet had ascended the throne and was sovereign.
Memet was sovereign,
but in the land of Osman
the wind was a fruitless cry, a death song.
The peasants' work done by the light of their eyes
and the sweat of their brows
was a fief.
The cracked water jugs were dry -
at the springs, horsemen stood twirling their mustaches.
On the roads, a traveler could hear the wail of men without land
and land without men.
And as foaming horses neighed ad swords clashed
outside the castle door where all roads led,
the market place was in chaos,
the guilds had lost faith in their masters.
In short, there was a sovereign, a fief, a wind, a wail.
2.
This is Iznik Lake.
Still.
Dark.
Deep
It's like a well
in the mountains.
Around here lakes
are smoky.
Their fish taste flat,
their marshes breed malaria,
and the men die
before their beards turn white.
This is Iznik Lake.
Beside it stands the town of Iznik.
In the town of Iznik
the blacksmith's anvil is a broken heart.
The children go hungry.
The women's breasts are like dried fish.
And the young men don't sing. .
This is the town of Iznik.
This is a house in the worker's quarter.
In this house
lives an old man named Bedreddin.
Small build,
big beard -
white.
Eyes like a child's, sly and slanted,
and yellow fingers like reeds.
Bedreddin
sits
on a white sheepskin.
He's writing Foundations
in Persian script.
Down on their knees, they sit across from him.
And from a distance
they look at him as if staring at a mountain.
Head shaved
eyebrows bushy,
he looks :
tall and rangy Mustafa.
He looks :
hawk-nosed Kemal.
They don't tire of looking
and cannot look enough -
they gaze at the Iznik exile Bedreddin.
9.
(...)
It was hot
The clouds were full.
The first drop was about to fall like a sweet word.
All :
of a sudden,
as if streaming down from the rocks,
raining down from the sky,
and springing up from the ground,
Bedreddin's braves faced the Prince's army
like the last act of this earth.
With flowing white robes, .
bare heads,
bare feet, and bare swords...
A great battle took place.
Turkish peasants from Aydin,
Greek sailors from Chios,
Jewish tradesmen,
Mustafa's ten thousand heretical comrades
plunged into the forest of enemies like ten thosand axes.
The ranks of green-and-red flags,
inlaid shields,,
and bronze helmets
were torn apart,
but when the day descended into night in pouring rain,
the ten thousand were two thousand.
That they might sing as one voice
and together pull the nets from the water,
that they might all work iron like lace
and all together plow the earth,
that they might eat the honeyed figs together,
that they might say,
"Everywhere
all together
in eveything
but the lover's cheek,"
the ten thousand lost eight thousand...
They were defeated.
The victors wiped their bloody swords
on the flowing white robes
of the defeated.
And the earth brothers had worked all together
like a song sung together
was ripped up
by the hooves of horses bred in the Edirné palace.
Don't say
it's the necessary result
of historical, social, and economic conditions -
I know!.
My head bows before the thing you mention.
But my heart
doesn't speak that language.
It says,
"O fickle Fate,
O cruel Fate!"
And they pass one by one,
shoulders slashed by whips,
faces bloodied -
in a flash they pass,
bare feet crushing my heart -
the defeated of Karaburun pass through Aydin...
10.
They stopped at dark.
It was he who spoke :
"The city of Seljuk has set up shop.
Now whose neck, friends,
whose neck is it now?"
The rain
kept up.
They spoke
and told him :
"It isn't
set up -
it will be.
The wind hasn't
quit -
it will.
His throat isn't
slit -
it will be."
As rain seeped into the folds of darkness,
I appeared at their side
and said :
"Where are Seljuk's city gates?
Show me, so I can go!
Does it have a fortress?
Tell me, and I'll raze it!
Is there a toll?
Speak, so I don't pay it!"
Now it was he who spoke :
"Seljuk's gates are narrow.
You can't come and go.
It has a fortress
not so easy to raze.
Go away, roan-horsed brave,
go on your way..."
I said : "I can come and go!"
I said : "I can raze and set fires!"
He said : "The rain has ended,
it's getting light.
The headsman Ali,
is calling
Mustafa!
Go away, roan-horsed brave, yiğit
go on your way..."
(...)
14.
The rain hisses,
like words of betrayal
whispered
in fear.
The rain hisses,
like the bare white feet
of renegades
running on wet black earth.
The rain hisses.
In Serrai's market place,
across from the coppersmith's,
Bedreddin hangs from a tree.
The rain hisses.
Swinging from a bare branch,
getting wet in the rain
late on a starless night
the naked body of my sheik.
The rain hisses.
The market place is mute,
Serrai is blind.
Doomed to the grief of not seeing or speaking,
Serrai's market place buries its face in its hands.
The rain hisses.
Tr. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk*
*The highly praised translations of Nazim Hikmet's poetry by the American poet Randy Blasing and Professor Mutlu Konuk was first published in The American Poetry Review (1974). Later their translations published in book form by Persea Books in U.S.A. : Poems of Nazim Hikmet; Human Landscapes. These books were highly recommended by Memet Fuat in his columns in the Turkish newspaper "Cumhuriyet".