ELEGIES: THE SARCOPHAGUS OF MOURNING WOMEN Aglayan Kadinlar Lahdi (1993). Istanbul: Harf Yayinlari.

Author: Enis Batur Translator(s): Saliha Paker, Clifford Endres Genre: poetry

  Viator, viator!
Quod tu es, ego fui; quod nunc sum, et tu eris.
  — Carmina Epigraphica

I
If one day you should die,
that very instant on my sky
would be etched a meteor of flame,
here, in the caravan creaking from town to town,
is the tent I folded and put away,
the anticipation I kept
in a riddle pitched from day to night
at each precise oasis secretly left behind,
the water’s song will not vainly trail
this drop from the spring
—unheard lyre.


II
If ever I should feel, the memory
of touch crusted over—how long!—
will stir and tremble on my skin,
a long shudder shake the clock-spring
that held its breath in a dark nook
and the panes of all the windows in me break,
now one’s been opened;
the hourglass I reversed and set aside
will swagger up, each grain of sand prepared
to melt in my fountain: there was a time, once,
you left this land in sorrow.


III
If like a blow the news fell, if
the stuttering of a leaden tongue
shaped that leaden sentence: in me
a silent, endless boat
quickly and softly sets sail
toward a skyline lost long ago,
dawn comes no more now, nor dusk,
nor is a place left in my breast
for nights, I hear your voice
hiding under seaweed,
solid salt cloaks me, secret.


IV
Who could say you’ve gone, who
could summon the courage to accost
all the meanings to crack on my face—
I don’t know, anxious, I look
beside me for the strong medicine
to cure me of my five senses—
if, in the painful turn of the wheel
I thought would bear every burden,
every spoke should crack—at a stroke—
my own sap would first gush forth
from the earth for which they are preparing you.


V
I say: keep it a secret from me
that the kite has vanished from sight,
let the mirrors in the house be draped,
and my light, and the surfaces that swallow it;
if for a moment I could see my eyes
the stone in me would sweat, my light go dark,
I would see into the night beyond night
and remember the shared wind,
I would remember the town’s rooftops:
keep it secret that you flew from the waters I hid—
I am a snarl of ivy tangled in my own sky.


VI
Already I see, gathered in relief, my face
on the face of the tomb, dark, a storm
massed within thunderclouds;
my body begins its long deliquescence,
autumn’s habit, falling through a distance
whose two ends are forgotten,
pain settles in the lines of my face
hidden in my hand then deserts
to the seed smoldering in me.
I’ll weep on the north face
of the tomb, ship with a broken rudder.


VII
You’re dead it seems, in me
you’d been dead for years, I thought
I’d buried you so, unwashed,
years and years ago, before ashes gathered ash.
I’d lived with you because of you
I thought, I almost died because of you,
it was a long time, a long time before
I rose up from where I’d crumpled
and believed you were no longer living.
I’ll bring my hands together on the tomb:
my face a curtain, my breast a plumb line in stone.


VIII
One day you would die I knew
the marble is hard, I could have wished
for a pair of hands at work there,
I wasn’t there before, I wished for a pair of hands
to carve, hands that could be yours,
I wasn’t there yet, but had been long ago.
If it hadn’t happened, it would happen
one day I knew, but who first?
I hoped and prayed and lit a candle
and as it melted drop by drop before me, stood:
you were walking, silent, though dead long ago.


IX
I felt the wound aching in memory,
a stubborn rain brought on before the rain
like the one we walked through, naked
and trembling, from tree to tree,
an island we reached on any map we found.
Wild strawberry scent. Morning haze.
On earth the kneading of flesh—then
the momentous rift. Once more the gathering of clouds,
I see, a late migrant bird
looks toward the rain, flies off,
stamped on my frozen gaze—herald.


X
To me you left no grief, no anger, no grudge
I discovered; of that jealous cell that wormed
so deep into my essence, no trace:
our lives seemed to swell in crescendo,
then ebbed in the same bed. If my eyes fill with tears
it’s not because you’re gone: I’m left here like this,
the meaning you gave me from a distance
is where you took it—you should have waited,
if you’d just waited, we’d find our lost landmark:
I looked for it, I’ll go back and look again,
it must come back, the bird I let fly away.


XI
It should face south, this carving of me.
Lost among these unhappy women
who speak neither to each other nor to death—
is that what offends me? Locked in this question,
head high, back straight, I stand and flaunt
the woman in me: only my eyes are cast down.
Let nobody think anyone else could hold me.
From now on I’ll not let down my long hair,
I won’t swell gently, even in season,
my lips won’t burst into flower.
Carve in stone, if it’s so easy, what’s gone from me.


XII
Wherever I put myself I’ll be on the same footing
with them; but the deep shadow I seek for my face
writhes like my body, endlessly shrinking,
though not from shame or revelation.
When the secret we sealed together is torn from its sheath,
oh, if only it were possible for them to see
my back drenched in sweat, the fearless chest
leaning over me, heart pumping like a bellows,
and in me that serpent shedding its skin,
oh, if only it would come from the earth
and take its fill of me.


XIII
Time will pass. And the times that pass
will crush to dust the blind stuff in us:
could my beauty, or his glory, stay?
My head leaning on my hand, my gaze lost
in the emptiness of this stone, are what will stay—
and this empty, worn-out tomb.
Royalty and beauty, nothing but dust!
Sightseers and bespectacled scholars
stroll around us in the museum all day.
Then darkness falls, the lights go out, extinguished
by the watchman: all night, each night, kept for us two.


XIV
I didn’t believe that flame had died—you,
more godlike than all the gods, more manly than men:
the earth trembled at your touch
and toppled town and country,
my wells are far deeper now,
my deserts more scorching than your noonday sun;
if I have lived in blood on your loins
I await your return parched and sealed,
none dreams more fiercely of your sudden return,
the sudden spark you’ll strike—
priceless the fire between us.


XV
You left, a single image in my mind.
Maybe you forgot which expedition or which land,
but you remembered the stranger in me:
astride your horse, was it my face you saw,
no, every syllable I spoke gave off heat from afar—
like the spark that flashed from your eye
at the touch of the wrong harp string:
in me you kept the king who wanted to escape himself
for an instant, stripped, headstrong, a distant
other, you stared at the horizon
and called from the room: come, saddle my horse, my queen.


XVI
A procession of women will circle the tomb
and none will know I was the last to come:
so weary, so eager to leave, for so long,
so long on fire with fear of being forgotten:
Look, there’s life in my womb!
No sleep, no rest, the ritual underway
already in its black grief transforming us all to stone
forever untouchable in our solitude,
plucked from the tree and left to rot on a silver dish
the hand cannot reach—I’m young:
What will happen to the wild blood swirling in me?


XVII
You fell silent, the question coiled and writhed.
Was I a wife to you on moonless nights
or did we remain sister and brother,
as we were born? Now I alone know
our bodies didn’t meet and the spirit
that flew far off to alight on a brittle branch.
I want it to live for ages, that curiosity, dark,
devouring, feeding on this deep doubt—
I who saw you, a sword at my side
half asleep, poised to unsheathe itself, and in me
a restless horde poised to drift your way.


XVIII
— translated in memory of Nazan Parer
A day to die will come, for me too,
and all those I have seen and heard
will go away: even if others live
this must be the last judgment on me:
my face in marble will wear away in weeping—
for I am all women and also none.
If I must stand drained of all line and color,
if I now stand mute and echoless,
know then the time will come
when none will see the last word on my face.
You look at me: gone is that instant, gone that breath.*

Istanbul 1993

(*) The Sarcophagus of Mourning Women stands in the Hall of Sidonian Sarcophagi in the Istanbul Museum of Archaeology. According to the Mendel Catalogue, it is Ionian in style, sculpted ca. 350 BC by a Sidonian who was influenced by Attic art. The artist, once thought to be of Lycian origin, was probably from an Aegean island or coastal town, as the sarcophagus is different from Lycian works in composition and spirit.
The poem was sparked by Samih Rifat’s illustrated article on the sarcophagus; his article was inspired by Onat Kutlar’s essay, "Epitaph for an Eastern King." The poem has no organic links, however, with either of these pieces or with the authoritative description in the Mendel Catalogue. I looked at the sculptures and composed. Is it necessary to see, to have seen, the Sarcophagus of Mourning Women? I don’t think so: the poem depends no more on the sarcophagus in the museum than on another sarcophagus still buried, perhaps never to be found. — EB

Other work(s) in this website: FIRE poetry1997 A SUMMER NIGHT LEFT AT TODORI'S poetry1997 OR / OR PERHAPS poetry1997