İstanbul Ağrısı [English translation]

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