Ataol Behramoğlu Quotes

"I've Learned Some Things" ["Yaşadıklarımdan Öğrendiğim Bir Şey Var"] (1977)

A poem is a living organism.

I've learned some things from having lived: If you're alive, experience largely, merge with rivers, heavens, cosmos For what we call living is a gift given to life And life is a gift bestowed upon us

They were eyes, that while gazing on the world Rendered it brilliant with meaning They were eyes, that embraced me with glances They were eyes, for which I now hopelessly long

A person can gaze at the sky for hours Can gaze for hours at a bird, a child, the sea To live on the earth is to become part of it To strike down roots that won't pull free

Writing poems is perhaps the loveliest deception Later they'll make a picture or something, then go and drink wine

To your utmost, listen to every beautiful song As though filling all the self with sound and melody One should plunge head-first into life As one dives from a cliff into the emerald sea

I want to write poetry, I'm bored, disgusted by my habits If I stop thinking and put my hands down perhaps I will have much to say I'm scurrying to the attic like a solitary bug Before you become old and ugly, I must kiss you on the nose

I'd make me into a brand new sailor if I were God Maybe there were new things over there It comes from within me to write as though rabid, I'm hungry, do you understand Let the doctors call it what they will Who can know anything best of all What does it mean to know anything best Which religion doesn't grow old

Distant lands should draw you, people you don't know To read every book, know other's lives, you should be burning You shouldn't exchange for anything the pleasure of a glass of water No matter how much the joy, your life should be filled with yearning

Death, one experiences alone Love is a two-person thing

I've learned some things from having lived: If you're alive, experience one thing with all your power Your beloved should be worn out from being kissed And you should drop exhausted from the smelling of a flower

In the most affirming places of their love Suddenly they grew tired, out of breath Little by little they felt the death Of some places left in darkness

I do not remember any other term when the force that had captured the political power in this country had become so vulgar as it is today, so corrupt, and so hypocritical; when the legal system had been so downtrodden, deteriorated, collapsed and turned into a means of cruelty.

The poet should be responsible to the poem.