Nihat Ziyalan

THE ECHO Nihat Ziyalan My ears cannot take it anymore; The voices coming from deep inside me, Without rhyme or reason. Are they from the times When I was first slapped, Or I fell down from a horse and broke my arm? Is it my scream, When my toenail hit a rock and broke off? Are they the words Of the girl I took home in a carriage After a literary event, Who said: “You’re the first one To kiss me after my mom”? Or the words I couldn’t utter, “It is the same for me”? Is that the voice Of the falling tree When my father heard the death of my brother? His coffin was made of the same tree! Alongside my mother’s cloth-wrapped head, With a pitcher full of tears; A pine scented voice Above the carriage going beyond the Tauruses! Are these the voices? I wove with the yarn of forbearance, That kept clashing and turned into echoes, When I took to the roads to go to faraway places. I don’t know how I can stop them Before they turn into an avalanche. Translated by Nilűfer Mizanoǧlu Reddy (Original published in Varlık, March 2009, p. 13)