In the Land of Ancestors | On the Other Side of Resistance

In the Land of Ancestors

I composed the word corpse, arriving

at your smile. (It makes no difference—

from me to you, or from you to me.)

Welcome to my diaries, a black territory,

where the dawn is your namesake.

Pulling out the dead body from the bygone

air; reaching the concealed and cornered smile;

thinking in harmony with air conditioners

and clocks; rolling into the lake, under the cascade

with a crystalline landslide; watching the summer

passing us by while swimming; tasting the fragrances

from the prayer’s rug and old caskets; writing without

wearing glasses; absorbed in a river that ran

for a fleeting moment; not feeling responsible

for the word that slipped out of mind just now.

Pal!

I’m sorry for returning from my hunt with an empty bag.

Let us get along (me with you, or you with me, either way).

Maybe we would continue this shared dream,

even if our constellations were not aligned.

Lunacy predates astronomy in the land of ancestors.

On the Other Side of Resistance

On the other side of resistance is a wall

in a sleepless country—a city residing in lights;

a city cooking with the future’s life savings;

a city awaiting the doomsday.

It is no use standing in stations or on pedestrian lines

every morning. It is no use waking up

to the untruthful preaching of a news anchor

announcing the waiting and the weather,

and working in the city of future when the night—

for you and the sleep—is a chador you have worn

against the terror of sleep thieves—when your shoes

are always missing in the dream and

you have to travel through the desert…

It is no use lingering in the languor of coffeehouses,

seeing a drowning look in the depth of

a tea glass or listening—passively,

alongside the wall—to the sermons

of ministers—at the hour of adhan

when the whole country is summoned;

at noon when the garden, except for

wireworms and weeds, is bereft of growth.

On the other side of resistance

is a wall of imagination, of seeing…

Unread, on the memory of the niche

on the wall: a myth of a book in which

a defenseless love is buried, in the house

of forbidden youth, in a city

awaiting the doomsday.

Image by Yusuke Nagaoka.