Bosphorus
a pungent bay bush in the April sun
a
yellow taxi on a cobbled lane
a limping dog, a red clay court
reflecting
light, a dolmuş horn
a ferry on the counter-current
strait
a
pied caique, the Argo’s wake
the stench of tunny
from
the Golden Horn
a minaret, a cross,
what
we must do, what we have done
bougainvillea on a poet’s grave
a
yogurt-seller’s lusty call
a junkman’s raucous cart
ripe
figs that thumbs have split apart
Kadiköy Ferry
‘I learn by going where I have to go.’
Roethke
For months I’ve been trying to
write a poem called
‘Kadiköy Ferry’ about how I am
pulled back
to Turkey because my children were
born there.
I have some evocative lines in the
poem like A gypsy
girl sells flowers, her fingers
curled around yellow
calendulas and Dark-browed
Anatolian faces fill the
tea stalls, but the poem
isn’t going anywhere – it’s
dead in the water so to speak –
even though there is
a ferry ride in it from Kadiköy in Asia across
the Bosphorus to the Golden Horn – and that is one
fantastic trip. But I’m worried
that the poem is
maudlin, so I sigh, quit writing,
and turn the page.
There’s a granite stone in line
fourteen that is supposed
to be a hint the children are dead,
and I use fists of nails
as a reference to the houses I
built when I moved from
place to place, feeling distraught
with grief because
my two children did die and they
were born in Istanbul,
where I’m drawn to, because of
them. Then the poem
ends in New
England with falling maple leaves, an
image of loss that’s a bit stale.
But I do love that ferry
ride and seeing the caiques in the
Bosphorus and
the Dolmabahçe Palace
over on the European side.
To the south on a low hill you can
see Aya Sophia where
it’s been for fifteen centuries,
and once, on the top deck
of the ferry (as I said in the
poem), I watched a Turkish
guy with inward-peering eyes slowly
picking a stringed
instrument and looking as if he too
had lost someone.
