Letters to My Daughter
(In Secret)
1.
My little girl, my little girl, my little girl
You were all sparkles when I saw you last
I was happy, you were trusting
Yet it was the last time I came to see you
Before we were parted.
How would you have known you'd be orphaned
Just at that moment, how.
I kissed your face, your eyes
Then, like a fugitive I departed
Our house, our neighborhood
A harsh wind beats now on the lowered
Shutters of the room where I stay
In your little heart, ill-defined anxiety
Perhaps, you are thinking too of me.
Before us is a long separation
Lasting months and maybe years.
I will either look upon you again
From behind the chain-links
Without kissing, smelling
Your face, your hands
Or from afar, in exile
Make do with your voice alone.
Those songs I taped
At home, but a day ago
With a dark presentiment
Will you sing them to me once more
When we meet each other again
Within me a tarry bitterness
An ache in my head
It will go only at the touch of your hands
Within me a tarry bitterness
A pitch-dark sorrow
If I only knew you wouldn't grow at all
That you would wait for me
With those songs you learned
With that four year-old sweetness
I would endure the years-long agonies,
The prison, the exile
To me, of all the agonies
Of all the separations
The one that most bitter seems
Is your growing up far from me
I who wished to see
The burgeoning of your spirit, your body
Every tiny millimeter of you
As though raising a flower
With painstaking attention
In the warmth of my hands
My little girl, my little girl, my little girl
No matter what comes, wait for your daddy to return
That he might love you
In your childhood just a little more
Oh long and
Mournful night
Oh
Love's aching bud...
Ataol Behramoglu
Translation by Walter Andrews
(Butun Eserleri, III: 191-193)
Email: galipkaya@hotmail.com
