The Poem of Age 35 by Cahit Sitki Taranci
Age 35! That makes half of the way!
We are in the middle of life like Dante.
The vigor of our youth,
-Crying and begging are in vain today,
Ends without caring about your tears.
Did it snow on my temples or what’s this?
God, is this wrinkled face mine?
Or these purple rings beneath my eyes?
Why do you seem as enemies,
The mirrors which I knew as friends for years?
How men change by time!
The man in any picture is not me.
Where are those days, where is that glow and excitement?
This merry man is not me.
My carefreeness is just a lie.
Our first love is something like a dream,
I find strange even its memory now.
Our ways separated one by one,
With the friends we had begun living.
Our loneliness grows gradually.
I’ve seen that sky has also another colour.
I’ve noticed too late that stone is hard.
Water drowns and fire burns!
Each new day brings a new trouble,
And man can discover all these just at this age.
Quince’s yellow, pomagranate’s red; autumn,
Which I adopt a little more each year.
Why are the birds wandering in the sky?
What funeral is this? Who is dead?
After how many gardens is this one that I see as scattered?
Unfortunately death is for everybody.
You’ll fall asleep but you won’t wake up again.
Who knows where, how, when?
You’ll have a single prayer’s glory,
On that throne-like gravestone.
Eppur Si Muove 