This page is referenced by:

• 1 2015-11-29T19:21:26-08:00 a translation from Toronto, November 2015 5 plain 2015-11-30T02:00:59-08:00

  sena[1]

  
  my hand my foot
  since long time I don’t know who told who what
  I have never seen anyone whose name passes through both bread and rose
  I haven’t met them

  I slightly slowly am
  a person who does not do anything five times a day
  I am slightly terribly inclined towards the saddest of spices
  if possible poppy
  if not I can break my heart with similar words too
  lets say ginger

  lets say hibiscus
  

  my hand my foot
  this tale where what I have been through and what passes through my mind is mixed
  a street I walk through repeating love is making everything slower
  your heart is the tambourine and a hole
  the picture of a child who is carrying a mark of the world in his heart she said
  since I looked at you five times a day
  since I woke up to all these mornings of this world
  I slept all these sleeps
  I wished to have a face that has terribly believed in the world
  [to have] a terrible heart which I would say I will kill myself with you
  [to have] a hand
  [to have] a foot
  [to have] words that I would blow with the wind that I load my mouth with
  to say terrible
  to say horrible
   
  my hand my foot
  in this intersection where I don’t know what I am delivering to where
  the herbalist who called those things which leave their voice behind were spices, told
  it is a curse to be whole
  it is a sin to think of becoming whole
  this life is offending but letters made out of world
  I came here half moony and defected
  instead of doing nothing for five times a day
  I looked at you
  world became looking at you
  one by one the spices
  piece by piece how the time was sweating us
  I sadly told you about a face that believed in the world
  I said maybe world is looking to somewhere sadly
   
   
  seven times to its mountains
  once to its bazaars it snows in east
  the days pass with stopping and waiting and days that continue with stopping and waiting
  I came here through the dreams that continue even after waking up
  lets say basil
  I stopped and studied basil around here
  lets say I got tired as much as working on basil in this world
  I wanted you to know
  for the first time bread and rose will pass next to us
  for the first time bread and rose will pass in our name 
  I beg you please don’t get me involved with [infected by] the world
   
  my hand my foot
  My mind tangled in a house which protects its soul and walls with prayer at first
  my heart tangled
  my grandmother who said east ate its mountains
  made my sisters drink water so they won’t notice everything they see
  made them eat wind so they won’t speak everything they know
  I looked at that from within a well
  I swallowed each time before I said my grandmother or the world
  I chose this face for myself with the name of the east that ate its mountains 

  I said maybe life was a place of swallowing
  that courtyard
  that roof
  that childhood
  I said maybe life was a place of swallowing
   
  my hand my foot
  so my sisters whose hearts are full of swallowing
  how can this be possible
  they started talking from their hair
  I said isn’t it that I am in my blackest age
  isn’t it that I ate my bread buried into the sweat of my face
  I should be going to those most terrible plants right now
  I called for the poppy
  I went for hibiscus
  I was ginger
  I told myself one should always roll wood and I should smoke it
  prayers on our walls
  that magical grandmother in those prayers
   
  my hand my foot
  in those days that I spend trying to please my stone with the enemies
  I am fine but there is a hole in my heart
  I am fine but this is east
  I am fine but my circumstances are bad [where] in all those places where I was defined
  I said this is sunna
  this is sunna
  this long defect of yours to think that I am growing things that I don’t cut
  this slowness on the edge of your heart
  what leaves my sentences half
  what makes me burn into smoke whatever that is in the name of that
  how can this be possible
  I started talking from my eyes first
  I have seen the evening of the world
  the places of curiosity suspicion and waiting
  one morning when life asked me to come forth to the blackboard
  the pencil that I wrote world is cold was broken
  that mirror
   
  I have seen it
  wherever I went on this world I was straight and my shadow was hunchbacked 
   
  my hand my foot

  you went and your rain continued later
  there were some stone bazaars of the world that I tried in this world
  the plants of patience [that I tried]
  the east which I slept forty sleeps of
  the street that I walked on in forty ways
  life stayed on my neck with an awkward stickiness
  I said even if I get washed in forty voices your voice can not be cleaned from my heart
  I am straight my shadow is hunchbacked
  this mark is different
   
  Seyyidhan Kömürcü

   
  Kömürcü, Seyyidhan. Dunya Lekesi [Mark of the World]. Istanbul: Everest
       Yayinlari, 2012. Print. pg. 10-20
   

  ---

  [1] “Sena” means both glorification and eulogy in Ottoman Turkish. The word probably has its etymological root in either Arabic or Farsi. It is not used in modern Turkish with these meanings any more but it became a widely used a women’s name.