The Fire of Each Passing Day

İf you hurt a Long haired heart's  they say

That makes you lose your hair

Yet my father’s only beloved is my mother,

And so it is with my mother too.

If you do not wash off the salt of the sea,

its seaweed will pull you down.

If you do not wash off the dragonflies,

from the murky lotus ponds’ mud and mist—

Since Köroğlu of Bolu, the mountain women

live their days through the embroidery

they stitch while knitting socks.

And as the sun rises and sets,

always, in its bending,

it gathers itself again.

These plains do not belong

to the winged who perch upon them.

Our milk and yogurt are pure, let them be pure.

Our dog does not snarl at friends,

and roses bloom in our garden

nothing has been quite the same.

Since my grandfather

But the pines he planted on the hill

where he prayed still resist—

against the fire, against the creatures of fire.

They become shadow in prostration,

they become hand to the forest.