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In the sitting rooms of all houses / there is now a bright hungry guillotine

all sewers are open to us sir / everything flows towards heaviest indifference

 

 

Poems of Destruction

  

Fragment by Arif Ay

I would like to know you sir

put aside your mask

all frogs have a night of their own

my absence and my voice have a night of their own

find me a place to leave my voice

 

What is it that whittles mankind away, sir

silence or speech

how do men multiply, sir

let us find a place to dump the speeches

 

In the sitting rooms of all houses

there is now a bright hungry guillotine

all sewers are open to us sir

everything flows towards heaviest indifference

forget about the one that doesn't flow, sir

 

you always stay put

like an antiquated port from times well past

where fishes of unknowable age swim in moonlight

you are an antiquated mister, sir 

 

I am falling apart in the darkness

find me a place to leave my silence

a shining ship of death on a sorry wharf

we are truly romantic executioners, aren't we sir ?    

*   *   *   *   *

 Translated by Mevlut Ceylan

 

 

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