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        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
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        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions
    • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • Best of The Enchanting Verses 2012
    • Bulletins

Poems by Seyhmus Dagtekin


PORTRAIT


If I became big, I would also grow trees
buildings, cars, orbits
beakers, eggs
I would grow the eyes of others so that they could see me big
I would crush bones in the waters of reptiles
and would put them in an egg with no shell that I would swallow
to become even bigger in your eyes
go beyond them
tie every day the end of my sentence with a new lace
near a tree
at the foot of a dog that has passed away
and fall
into a visage
with no face


Ad nausea packs of animals will break through your skin

Translated by Donald Winkler




BARELY A THREAD ON THE LIPS


About which death am I going to speak for three pages, a hundred pages
One hundred and fifty ages
Having come to the maturity of a lunar year

But no, it isn't this that passes
Passes through our heads
That smashes us
Not this, not this numbed love
Every day a new language bears down on my heart where blood flows as in so many rumps within easy reach
/
Language moves off like a pocket that empties

Isaline stays where she is with the same shadows
Palm trees in triangle, fireman in figurine
Flowers for any season, yes, yes, any season
A fly, an ant
And not even a single van
But fires, yes, of all shades
I turn on the ignition
Signal a turn
Honk the horn
– It is nice the hat you swallow with your saliva
Far off, the murmuring of birds, roads, wind, household noises, leaves unmoving under the sun
The white of the eye and a fly spinning round on my head
The lost run of dogs in the barking of things
Exiting lairs
Coming home in gunpowder
Picking one’s grey matter out of the dust
In the hidden heart of things


Lower your head and raise it no more. Run till there’s no more running, or feet, or road, or mud, or dust. Till you can no longer stand. Till there’s nothing left to place end to end. Till you’re gone from the beginning and the end
But then run, but then gnaw at your bawling
Like a lost key
That’s missed the step and dropped into a space
Two steps down
Brimful of sand and mud

Chew on the right, drink on the left
Who will pass by
Who will stop in this passage
Present and absent at once
At the same time there
At the same time
The gaze locked in the transience of what’s there
In the closed world of sight


It’s enough for us not to be in the same place at the same time
To rub ourselves up against this heart
Each in one’s place
With the winds you can raise
In an hour and a half
You can, you can’t
You run on, but you don't rage
Everyone’s nibbling at the end of something
An unearthed look, an absent poem
This stroke chased by that stroke
Just like joy, just like sadness
In the palm of a girl in the unfurling of the day

In other words to reach the void you must pass through flesh and raise no alarms
Hanging by the end of a thread
Whose opposite end is in empty space
I thought I had, I thought I knew
To come back and to wind things up
To come back wound up
To a fault


Words in their awkward saddles no more
dogs frozen in the now
blown and sculpted in my image again
a swimmer in the today
pricking these cherries at their ends
and introduce Venus inevitably
into the field of my well-reasoned
battles
sites more and more scattered wide
like remembrances punctured with lakes
words seeking refuge in my bodies
side by side
with their colors
their confounding coughs

Flesh touching flesh, which allows for the rebound
Simple and neat
As a snake in the skin
/
Near this aged wood
that with my own hands I put
into this cubbyhole

– Stay little man; stay little in your place

But what’s there within
These novelistic airs
Nothing awatch, nothing worthwhile
In this loving and to love
Happy who like Ulysses
Machete with no match
To scratch the unseen behind your neck

That’s it, I told myself, love, it’s that
to seek out the other in the scraps
father blowing on embers and cats
for the cries that will come long after


She will pass by, running late
she will say that she can't
with a cup in her hand
with a plate on her head
she will pass by again to outrun her delay
/
Let's send a mouth upon an apple
An eye upon a thumb
Let's start to gnaw the tongue by tip and syllable
Let's drop our hands back of the clattering of a rain of letters
/
I run, you run and return
You shake, you bawl
I’ve done it all. You choked,
A bit undone
I run, you run, I return
At all costs
Reread your thoughts
Drop by drop

         - Eat fast and put the mouthfuls in chains

I told myself, that’s where you have to be
on the pealing point
stains of ugly and shapeless words
time tolling in the future
giant mice at the city’s gates
scratching its plants
to become invisible
every day
except those when her voice fills the footstep that will undo the morning
between earmuffs and muscles
that on the horizon cross with my steps widening your mouth
to dress this flesh and bring off the roaming of my tongue in your gouts of blood
No matter what


I know you don't go outside my words. That you aren't weighed down just with my lower cases. That your fingers aren't pulled just by my upper cases.
No dotted lines. No lines drawn
Only the green of your eyes
But I’ve fallen into my beaked shroud
A good repast
Eternal rest
Between dog and she-wolf
She goes to ground and unmasks her ears
With four-leafed clovers
She bores into the jaws of those settled there
/
Except madame geyser who sews herself new skins
With no message from madame algosti at midnight
Mister daddy breathing his words onto the heads of rosines with plaits

Mister daddy would have been able to cover himself with his papers and so complete his nights, flanked by his two mothers-in-law who each keep an eye on him facing forwards swathed in the baby teeth of new sharks born long after the first flakes fell


One more story that comes to cloud the drop of water on the mane of the horse. The new bergamots will pass by, four birds in each palm, a bit plump but keeping time
A bitch within reach of my leg
In the earth, under the earth, on the earth
Belly filling with earth
To empty my head
And speak of women and financial curves
To make this a bit cool
A bit sad. A bit bloodsucky
Trying different ways to dip breath back into a wind gone by

The nude will arrive knowing that tonight there was no dream with twenty-one stains on the breath
A second P with S, followed by two Ts, a third P with no S topped with a white bar followed by three Ts, clutched by two ears, dressed in three buttons and a fly in step with the water and the hard-pressed clouds
In the same cooked thickness
Where populace rhymes with necropolis
Words as warring as coarse
To buy from my three babies
A small room in this rumpus
With the dreams of a small amnesiac jackal
/
The dream will come
The worst will become
A small amnesiac jackal
To wedge your head
In the corner of an open table
Between eye and ovary
A machine to travel through time
That will stay there
And won’t come back
For two travelers and a cannon
Warm baby cows that want to eat lettuce
Wrapped round by brigitte
On a bulbous line
Circled by half-moons
Passing through opera, lazarus, trinidad
A milk-grey bear
A nasty chicken
From the trials of the north and the rituals of the south

A full fistful of red
A pinch of beard
Sectored by nausea and a bite to eat
In the head of a hand cow
Wrongly depending
On the lean holes of a shepherdess

And meanwhile Maigret’s hand gun will riddle
Three of these walls
That you want to hush up
Laden with big spiraled bison
    – I knew what I knew wasn't far from what you hushed up
There, in the crossroads of every stone, in its new mouth
There, I saw her toes, her lips
Her mad red locks of hair
No calmer, no firmer
Sixteen thousand pebbles poured out before my kennel
A thousand nails in so many heads
Each one on the move between the legs taking turns in my dreams

We sink more and more into the cosmos. Here, we dive. We are in the midst of a whirlwind. In the deeps. How nice! I want to plunge in. It’s not the real universe. It’s a universe of sounds. Even nicer. There we are, in we go again

In the workings of how many heads, how many hands, have I wallowed today? When I take a car that I drive on the highway, when I take a plane, a shuttle, when I take another car on the road again, when I find myself in a house where I eat, drink, get warm, turn on the light, cover myself, lie down …
How many links, how many knots have I added on in my throat today?

And suddenly, if my hand were to fail, if my eyes were to drop into the well of forgetfulness
No more car, no more bus, no more roads, no more planes, no more house, no more lightning bolts, no more heat, no more water, no more bread, no more bed, no more covering, no more flesh
Here, my hand drops, and my head next to my hand

How could I ring
                               in the same place
                                                            differently
so that you would answer me
                                         from a different place
at every ring


You peck at the daytime on the face you can see, and the night, on the divisible face of the moon. You top up your drunkenness according the splitting of seeds from the blows of your beak as though delivering a river crowned by a horn in the company of the magi
You don't know why a jug so empty exhausts itself in your path
To hammer your whiteness
In the revolving stables
/
Like an olive
Martinique
Bare legs
Between mandarin and louisiana
A new lair in the rustling of leaves
My head at the crossing of skins
Shaven
And transplanted beneath your skirts


Just before me a door
I, door, opening on other doors
On the distended head of a lizard
That gnaws its nostrils
To crop its step towards day

I breathe into your nose
I eat from your mouth
I defecate through your skin
I block your ears
I burst your arteries
I cover your eyes
I walk with your feet
I shorten your arms
I merge with your voice
I soften your head and install myself inside
When you have no more room for me


O thou who art my brother
So near to time and temples
O thou whom I disfigure
As faces abandon me


For ten years I awaited a ring, a breath, a palpitation, and nothing moved. I stayed riveted to my chair, my thing. Time passed, and it only rang in my head, only palpitated under my tongue
The same figure undone in her rhythm as though wanting to finger me in her eclipse


[As long as I was there
    near you
                                                            in this dwelling place
                                                                                I held in my hand the eternal]

But what to do
with the virgin on the chair
with these dated deliveries
Barely bared
Barely a thread on the lips

Translated by Donald Winkler

​
Picture
Seyhmus Dagtekin is a Kurdish poet and writer. Dagtekin was born in the Harun village of Adiyaman province in Turkey. He currently resides in France, Paris, where has lived since 1987. He writes in Turkish, Kurdish or French, and is the author of seven poetry books, and a novel À la source, la nuit. He has played a leading role in renewing French poetry. Seyhmus Dagtekin has received prizes in France: The Mallarmé Poetry Prize 2007 and The Théophile Gautier Poetry Prize of The Académie Française 2008 for his book Juste un pont sans feu, The Yvan Goll International Francophone Poetry Prize for Les chemins du nocturne and the special mention of The Five Continents of the Francophonie Prize in 2004 for his novel.

​

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The Enchanting Verses Literary Review © 2008-2018    ISSN 0974-3057 Published from India. Printed by The Enchanting Verses Poetry Press. International Collaborative Partner: Stremež Literary magazine (1952), supported by the Ministry of culture of the Republic of Macedonia and published by National Institution - Cultural Centre "Marko Cepenkov" – Prilep.


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  • Home
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    • Issue Archives >
      • 2008 ISSUES >
        • ISSUE-I March 2008
        • ISSUE-II May 2008
        • ISSUE-III July 2008
        • ISSUE-IV October 2008
      • 2009 ISSUES >
        • ISSUE V JANUARY 2009
        • ISSUE-VI MAY 2009
        • ISSUE-VII August 2009
        • ISSUE-VIII December 2009
    • 2010 Issues >
      • ISSUE-IX April 2010
      • ISSUE-X July 2010
      • ISSUE-XI November 2010
    • 2011 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XII March 2011
      • ISSUE-XIII June 2011
      • ISSUE-XIV November 2011
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      • ISSUE-XV March 2012
      • ISSUE-XVI July 2012
      • ISSUE-XVII November 2012
    • 2013 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XVIII April 2013
      • ISSUE XIX November 2013
    • 2014 Issues >
      • ISSUE XX May 2014
    • 2015 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXI February 2015
      • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • 2016 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIII August 2016
      • Poetry From Ireland ISSUE XXIV December 2016
    • 2017 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXV August 2017
      • ISSUE XXVI December 2017
    • 2018 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXVII July 2018
      • ISSUE XXVIII November 2018
  • Honours
    • Honour Archives >
      • 2008
      • 2009
    • 2010
    • 2011
    • 2012
    • 2013
    • 2014
    • 2015
    • 2016
    • 2017
    • 2018
  • Collaborations
    • Macedonian Collaboration
    • Collaboration with Dutch Foundation for Literature
  • Interviews
  • Prose on Poetry and Poets
    • 2010-2013 >
      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-2(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-5(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-6(Sylvia Plath)
      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-2(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-5(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-6(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-7(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-8(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions
    • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • Best of The Enchanting Verses 2012
    • Bulletins