this site is a real gem for all poetry lovers.I hope slavica will like it although I guess she may have already been familiar with its content.

Turkish poetry

Enjoy)Orhan Veli Kanik section is amazing.

Hehe... not only that I am familiar with its contents, but I also suggested the same website at Links for Turkish Literature thread (see No 7 in Erdinç´s post).

Thanks anyway   This website is so good for poetry lovers that it deserves mentioning every now and then 

this poem made me smile from orhan veli:

TAIL SONG

We can´t come together, our ways are different
You´re a butcher´s cat, I´m an alley cat
Your food comes in a tin bowl
Mine is in the lion´s mouth
You dream of love, I of a bone

But your way isn´t easy either, brother
It´s no easy job
To lick the man´s hand every damn day

Orhan Veli Kanik

Translated by Bernard Lewis (1982)

Nightingales & pleasure gardens: Turkish love poems
Yazar: Talât Sait Halman, Jayne L. Warner

http://books.google.com/books?id=j2zztBsj_1IC&lpg=PP1&hl=tr&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q=&f=false

TAIL SONG

We can´t come together, our ways are different
You´re a butcher´s cat, I´m an alley cat
Your food comes in a tin bowl
Mine is in the lion´s mouth
You dream of love, I of a bone

But your way isn´t easy either, brother
It´s no easy job
To lick the man´s hand every damn day

Orhan Veli Kanik

Translated by Bernard Lewis (1982)

 Thank you

THE TAVERN

I don´t love her anymore
So
Why should I walk
Nights
By the tavern
Where I drank
Every night
Thinking of her?

               (translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat)

I smile reading that one................

THE TAVERN

I don´t love her anymore
So
Why should I walk
Nights
By the tavern
Where I drank
Every night
Thinking of her?
(translated by Murat Nemet-Nejat)

 It is lovely indeed, thank you 

Sounds a bit as a French poem, Jasques Prevert´s or  Paul Eluard´s...

This one too:

 SADNESS

  I might have got angry
  With those I love
  If love
  Hadn´t taught me
  To be sad.

  Orhan Veli Kanik

Translated by Anil Mericelli

 you are right about Paul Eluard,I love his poems

and thank you for sadness,it brings "Thank you note"By Szymborska to my mind  back especially nowadays

A "Thank You" Note

There is much I owe

to those I do not love.

The relief in accepting

they are closer to another.

Joy that I am not

the wolf to their sheep.

My peace be with them

for with them I am free,

and this, love can neither give,

nor know how to take.

I don´t wait for them

from window to door.

Almost as patient

as a sun dial,

I understand

what love does not understand.

I forgive

what love would never have forgiven.

Between rendezvous and letter

no eternity passes,

only a few days or weeks.

My trips with them always turn out well.

Concerts are heard.

Cathedrals are toured.

Landscapes are distinct.

And when seven rivers and mountains

come between us,

they are rivers and mountains

well known from any map.

It is thanks to them

that I live in three dimensions,

in a non-lyrical and non-rhetorical space,

with a shifting, thus real, horizon.

They don´t even know

how much they carry in their empty hands.

"I don´t owe them anything",

love would have said

on this open topic.

translated by Joanna Maria Trzeciak

I love Wislawa Szymborska, thanks for this one   I know this poem already, but in other translation and under the name of "Gratitude".

And do you know her poem "Cat in an empty apartment", written after her husband´s death? Isn´t it is soooo touching...

Well, since it is Turkish Poetry Forum, let´s share a few poems of her in Turkish - enjoy 

 thank you Slavicahad an opportunity to meet Szymborska,cannot express how worthy and deep it was

know most of her poems by heart

GERÇEK AŞK
Wislawa Szymborska

Gerçek aşk. Normalmidir
önemlimidir, pratikmidir?
Ne alır dünya iki insandan
sadece kendilerine ait bir dünyada yaşayan?

Aynı tabana konulmuş iyi sebep olmadan,
milyonlardan gelişigüzel çekilmiş fakat ikna edilmiş
böyle olmuş olması gerektiğine- neyin karşılığında ödül?
Hiçbirşeyin.
Işık olmadık yerden aşağıya iner.
Ne diye bu ikisinin üzerine de başkalarının değil?
Bu uyandırmaz mı nefretini adaletin? Evet.
Bu bozmaz mı bizim özenle dikilmiş prensiplerimizi,
ve atmaz mı ahlakı bir kenara zirveden? İkisini de gözönünde tutarak, evet.

Bakınız mutlu çifte.
En azından saklayamazlarmıydı onu,
yapamazlarmıydı azıcık bir bunalım taklidi arkadaşlarının hatırı için?
Dinleyin gülüşlerini- bir hakarettir.
Kulandıkları lisan- yanıltıcı açıklıkta.
Ve küçük kutlamaları, törenleri,
ayrıntılı karşılıklı alışılagelmiş şeyleri –
hiç şüphesiz bir komplodur insan ırkının arkasından!

Çok güçtür hâtta tahmin etmek her şeyin ne kadar ileri gidebileceğini
İnsanlar peşinden gitselerdi eğer onların verdiği örneğin.
Din ve şiir neyi hesaba katabilirdi?
Neler hatırlanacaktı, nelerden vazgeçilecekti?
Kim isteyecekti kalmak içinde sınırların?

Gerçek aşk. Gereklimidir gerçekten?
İnce davranış ve sağ duyu bize onun üstünden sessizce geçmemizi söyler,
Hayatın en yüksek çemberlerinde bir skandal gibi.
Kusursuz iyi çocuklar doğar onun yardımı olmaksızın.
Nüfuslandıramazdı gezegeni bir milyon senede,
o kadar güçbelâ gelir ki.

Bırakın gerçek aşkı asla bulmayan insanlar
deyip dursunlar öyle bir şey yoktur.

İnançları daha kolaylaştıracaktır yaşamayı ve ölmeyi onlar için.

Çeviren: Vehbi Taşar


TRUE LOVE
By Wislawa Szymborska

True love. Is it normal
is it serious, is it practical?
What does the world get from two people
who exist in a world of their own?

Placed on the same pedestal for no good reason,
drawn randomly from millions but convinced
it had to happen this way - in reward for what?
For nothing.
The light descends from nowhere.
Why on these two and not on others?
Doesn´t this outrage justice? Yes it does.
Doesn´t it disrupt our painstakingly erected principles,
and cast the moral from the peak? Yes on both accounts.

Look at the happy couple.
Couldn´t they at least try to hide it,
fake a little depression for their friends´ sake?
Listen to them laughing - its an insult.
The language they use - deceptively clear.
And their little celebrations, rituals,
the elaborate mutual routines -
it´s obviously a plot behind the human race´s back!

It´s hard even to guess how far things might go
if people start to follow their example.
What could religion and poetry count on?
What would be remembered? What renounced?
Who´d want to stay within bounds?

True love. Is it really necessary?
Tact and common sense tell us to pass over it in silence,
like a scandal in Life´s highest circles.
Perfectly good children are born without its help.
It couldn´t populate the planet in a million years,
it comes along so rarely.

Let the people who never find true love
keep saying that there´s no such thing.

Their faith will make it easier for them to live and die.

it comes from

http://forum.mevsimsiz.net/lofiversion/index.php/t3650.html

And the one i love

Unexpected meeting

We are very courteous to each other,
Because it is nice to meet years later.

Our tigers drink milk.
Our hawks go on foot.
Our sharks drown.
Our wolves do a runner from open cage.

Our vipers shook off lightning,
Monkeys shook off inspiration, peacocks shook off feathers.
Bats so long ago flew away from our hair.

We fall silent in the middle of the sentence
Smiling without hope.
Our people
Cannot talk to each other.

espanol

Encuentro inesperado

Somos muy amables el uno con el otro,
decimos que es bonito encontrarse después de tantos años.
Nuestros tigres beben leche.
Nuestros azores van a pie.
Nuestros tiburones se ahogan en el agua.
Nuestros lobos bostezan ante una jaula vacía.
Nuestras víboras se han sacudido los relámpagos,
los monos la inspiración, los pavos reales las plumas.
¡Cuánto hace que dejaron nuestro pelo los murciélagos!
Callamos sin terminar la frase,
sonriendo sin remedio.
Nuestras personas
no saben cómo hablarse.

If you find Turkish version  SlavicaI would be grateful