Ataol Behramoğlu Quotes (1942-)

“Is the truth of tablecloths to be spread? How awful always to take refuge in known words
A person should let himself go.”

“Once more in that hour of darkness
In dark black waters they arise
Dark songs pass before their eyes
They lie awake gazing into darkness”

“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”

“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”

“

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

”

“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'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”

“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”

“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 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.”

“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”

“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”

“Gulls into the water, women proudly into the bazaars
I was going to write a poem, I was stifling, fed up with old things
Eat, my mother says, but they're all things I've grown accustomed to, in the end.
Like Camus and — I don’t know — people like that, I'm cracking up
Everything will begin when it untangles itself from your hair”