Wings broken to pieces these August nights
While the stars are boiling
Pouring down my feet with a crash
You
If you are Istanbul again
I'm gonna grow hell vines with blood severity again
I will spit poems by handfulls
So again me
All flags are rising in the forest of poles in the harbor
Individual rhymes twisted in front of the doors
Telaviv songs illuminating the Jewish streets
Descend upon the blue asphalts
Bending the knees
If you are Istanbul again
Extending its dirty lips to my cloudy lips
Stabbed by train screams at Sirkeci Station
From Haydarpaşa in suicide fumes
Looking at the Anatolian hills
Crying
If you are Istanbul again
If I’m not deceived
His collars are with cloves... if he doesn't cheat on me
Until blood gushes from my ears
I'm at your command again
If I’m not embarrassed
Having my eyes drip into my glass
I can poison
Myself, Atilla İlhan, that I know
Autumn will hold the darkness sooner
The bachelors are steamed at Tarlabaşı pensions
The cries of exams are rising from the university
Diesel trucks are drunk at Tophane Pier
Fearless drivers in love with their steering wheel
Sleeplessly driving
Is that you, hey Istanbul?
Are these your hands?
Are these ships yours, buddy?
Are these tattooed ships yours?
Which take their minarets between their teeth like toothpicks,
From harbor to harbor, and which spit this diesel?
Why do they get so big as the nights go flat?
Why are the sparks of emergency gushing constantly?
From their antennas?
Why?
Well Istanbul, how about me?
What about passenger Abbas who sticks his lines to customs walls
Like four colorful wall posters?
What about my sorrow?
What about your pain?
With your heavy hobnails you crushed my sleep wakelessly
Like a crazy snake vomiting desperate poisons
You poured inside me
It's your pain
It's yours
If you are Istanbul again
If I'm not mistaken
You
To whom I want to take in my hands as an old book
To whom I want to read to Sicilian fishermen, to Marseillean dock workers
Line by line
If you are Istanbul, again
If it is your pain that I feel like a barbed cradle all over me
You won, again, hey Istanbul
You won, I was defeated
Till blood gushes from my ears
I'm at your command again
If I die, if I stay alone, and my wallet gets lost
If I go broke, if I stay in seclusion
If no mailman knocks on my door any time
If I'm not mistaken
If you are Istanbul again
If they are your whistles that are stuck in my ears
From my loneliness that rotates like planets in my eyeballs
It means I got out breaking their doors with a kick
You know it too, Istanbul
How many times I wrote, who knows?
How many times have our eyelashes turned into bayonets
Brother mirc and me in September 1949
We lit a fire like mohicans in the streets
We worshipped you
Did you forget it
We worshipped you