We Are Not Brothers by Ümit Yaşar Oğuzcan (Translated) Poem by Dorukhan Baris Oguzcan

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I
Let us begin where God left off.
You kill half of the three billion people, and I'll kill the rest.
If only three remain on Earth, that's enough.
Come closer to me.
We are not brothers.

II
Free yourself from joys mixed with sorrow.
Cherish the vague warmth of desires.
You know,
First, God created man.
Then man created love.
Whatever we do is in vain.
No matter how much we try, it's useless.
We cannot go back.
What's done is done; it's too late.
Love has already mixed into our clay.

III
Who is singing these songs,
From the Karcığar suite, to the beat of the drum?
My mind reached a point and stopped.
Silence!
Now I'm playing with triangles.
Remove these circles.
A model girl came and undressed before me.
I made three brushes from her hair.
I had three tubes of paint:
Veronese green, emerald green, chrome green.
I mixed them all together.
I found your green.
In your green, orchestras played Debussy.
In your green, I forgot my darkness.

IV
Where is this maddening hum coming from?
Who broke these mirrors?
Gather our faces so we can see.
We are no longer ugly.
A door has opened before us to immortality.
We are beautiful.
Mornings are filled with us.
You spoke of light—here it is.
The Earth shines as bright as blind wells.
You spoke of color—look now:
Markets full of red,
Nights as white as milk,
A day orange amidst yellow suns,
Purple flowers in the garden of lost happiness.

V
I say we are not brothers, but you don't believe me.
All these virtues are lies.
It's these worthless people who destroy us.
I tell you not to care.
The world was created for us.
Three billion people came to Earth just for show.

VI
Every sorrow you gave has a place in my heart.
Whichever book I opened, I read you for years.
Whichever mirror I looked into, I saw you.
If you said come, I couldn't.
If you said go, I couldn't.
If you said die, my blood wouldn't flow.
I understand now, loving you is a noble thing.
I understand, loving you is like approaching God.
Among people, I believed only in you.
I loved only you, besides myself.

VII
In the hours when my sleep was broken,
You were the one I thought of, breath by breath.
You were like sharp knives in my darkness.
When I closed my eyes, I saw you.
With your walk resembling playful folk songs,
You appeared before me.
In my darkness,
Your hands were unseen stars.
In my darkness,
Your lips were a forest fire.

VIII
If you wanted, I would give life to these darknesses.
If you wanted, I would tear the sky like a handkerchief.
From seas, lakes, rivers,
I would create unseen colors for you.
Beyond time,
I would build a new world for you:
Without people, without God, without sorrow.
You would love,
Living with the coolness of mountain winds.
You would live,
Far from our miserable world.

IX
I am like flickering lights.
In my heart, the size of a fist, you reside.
I am with you now, in sacred sorrows.
We are alone in yellow-painted houses.
Your shadow has fallen on all the walls.
Your scent has permeated all the curtains.
Your fingers are white on the doors.
Your footprints are on the streets.
If I were to die on these streets,
The pavements wouldn't bear my weight.
If I spoke of my love for centuries,
These two-faced people wouldn't understand me.

X
If I said five prophets came to Earth,
You would be the fifth.
If I said only two people remained in the world,
You would be the second.
If I said there is one who created the heavens and the Earth,
That would be you.
To worship you,
I would make a clay statue in your beauty.
If I knew you were better than God,
If I knew God wasn't more beautiful than you.

XI
Your big, big eyes—
How do they stand in the void of your desires? I don't understand.
How, how do they look at me,
So devoid of mercy?
You say go.
Where should I go?
What will happen to my hopes?
Who will recite all these poems to you?
Who will tell the world of your beauty that doesn't fit within it?

XII
Even if it were possible to go, and I went far away,
Even if I never loved you again,
Even if I shattered my heart like glass,
Then burned it,
Scattered its ashes over snowy mountains and open seas,
I would still love you, dust by dust.
I would still worship you, as heavy as my ashes.

XIII
This oxygen gas wouldn't be necessary,
But if Beethoven hadn't come to the world,
I couldn't have loved you this much.
He stands between us.
To our right, the first violin.
To our left, the second violin.
In front of us, the third violin.
Then organs, flutes, double basses.
Silence this orchestra, Beethoven.
Is now the time for the ninth symphony?

XIV
All this loneliness, all this poverty, is not my doing.
I didn't create this ugliness,
Nor these treacherous beauties.
Whatever you didn't like in me came from you.
These dark looks,
The filth of these hands,
The vile words from my lips—
Clearly, they are your work.
Whatever evil I found, I found in you.
Whatever I learned, I learned from you.
After loving you, I began to live.

XV
If God created you, who created me?
Who gave me this torment?
I drank the venom of rattlesnakes,
The vomit of whales.
I am in sulfur-scented impossibilities.
Yet I was beautiful in the early ages of history.
If you saw me, you'd be amazed.
I was so bright,
So good.
My heart was filled with cobalt blues,
With lead whites.
You would have loved me,
As green as mussel shells.

XVI
In the end, what I said came true.
A star fell from the Milky Way to Earth.
People were crushed like flies.
Everything happened in an instant.
We were left utterly alone.
No radioactivity, no mushroom-shaped clouds,
No joy of living, no fear of death.
In the end, only three people remained in the world:
You,
Me,
And Jiro's Lesko.

XVII
Again, your face blushes when you look at me.
You still haven't escaped societal rules.
All the meadows are empty.
Don't you see?
Lift your head and go to the mountains.
Sing loudly in the streets.
Strike a match,
Let all the houses burn.
Take revenge for a hundred thousand years on this dishonorable world.
Then throw yourself into the sea,
Cool off a bit.

XVIII
I am human only as much as I can love.
Ten grams of arsenic is enough to end me.
Don't think of me.
Lie on the Mistral winds.
Nimbus clouds are coming—run.
Our sleep is broken; we are stark naked.
Sandstorms have begun
Beyond the Great Wall of China.
We left our shadows in an Asian city.
Our dreams remained in the Taklamakan deserts.
Come on, go.
We ceased to exist when we were two.
Come on, go.
If we remain as one, we will exist again.


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