Poetry Is Born in Loss

Why

do we write poems

in our most hopeless moments?

Why

didn’t Atilla İlhan say “I love you”

when Aysel was right there beside him?

Why

did he have to say,

“Go away from me”?

Do you think

Ümit Yaşar

wrote those lines

with Ayten still by his side?

No.

Ayten had long gone.

He wrote in pain:

“From now on, let the name of love

be Ayten.”

I say —

we only understand

once we’ve lost.

Or maybe,

when we finally see ourselves.

Because

when you’re in the moment,

you barely notice it —

maybe that’s

where the silence comes from.

Which lover

ever loves

thinking of the end?

Mine was just like that…

I used to laugh

at people like them —

those 75-year-old women,

alone by the sea,

at peace in gardened homes…

(a bit bourgeois, a bit wise)

saying things like:

“Stay in the moment.”

It sounded like a joke to me.

But now I think:

maybe they, too,

never really lived that moment —

and that’s why

they want to teach it now.

I think of my own poems.

No —

not a single one

came to paper

without tears falling from my eyes.

Those tears

were my pen.

I was pushed to write,

by myself —

not by a muse,

or anything else.

No,

it won’t come knocking

on your door —

let me tell you.

Because poetry

is something

you simply cannot write

until you’ve become

aware

of yourself.