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Afterglow - Ravine
Often it comes to me before
sleep the worry of what my
father thought just before
dying into the swirling water
around him. I wonder as the
old, crowded bus crashed
through the railings, its wheels
howling in fear, spinning wildly,
if my father knew there was
a death, a final one, stuck into
the floor of the river in the lonely
ravine in front of him. Did he scream
as the people and suitcases and words
and regrets and promises
tumbled over and over, behind,
in front, under, over him? And
when he got wet, did he remember
his childhood, when he first learnt
to swim, did he at first glide on
the cold water waves, before
this blood, his moustache and
beard froze? I want to know.
It is my right. I am his son. At
least you mother fucking, son of a
bitch of a God, let me
cradle his body in my arms
so that some warmth may return to it.
It is his right not to lie on a floor of
echoes at the feet of my mother half naked
with illiterate military policemen hovering
over him. I hope his soul is etched into the
walls of the ravine. If not, I will carve it on the foreheads
of the ghosts crying there.
By Kerem Durdag
Afterglow - father
I remembered my father
again
found my last letter to him
unread
the waters in which he drowned haven flown off
a cliff
not touching the edge of the paper on which
I wrote
funny, I thought, how his absence drenches my life
and my mothers
her hand pressing on my shoulder, her soul weighing
on mine
the sorrow of not telling him how he hurt us
dripping
in rivulets of regret into our veins, his face in
old photographs
saying to me, this is the way you are going to
get old
and I know he is somewhat right
once again I am wounded, drifting onto a shore
I left behind long ago, the redness of my blood tracing
the outline of my glide across prayers and conversations,
this never ending tug at the edges of my life,
all those words that were never spoken
lying unused and forgotten on the desert where
the ruins of Mohenjedaro blink at the appearance
of archeologists
you know, it is sometimes just too hard to
let it be
on those days when you return to be under the sky
where
he was your father.
By Kerem Durdag