An Ode to Ancient Times

Milattan önceki yıllardaki yazarları hayal ettiğimde, tahta bir masada, tek başına, sarı küçük bir mum ve katır kutur bir parşömen, ve mürekkep ve hokka, kalem…

Neden hep böyle hissediyorum?

Çok engin

Boşluk

Boş tarlalar, araziler

Sessizlik

Hayvanlar, otlayan sessiz hayvanlar

Yıldızlı gece altında ahırlarda sessizce bekleyen hayvanlar

It must have been “something else” to have known how to write back then. Imagine how small the world would be. How many people would be living on it. How many people would be alive at the same time?

Everything

So, slow, …

And you can just sit there and write. At the end of a day, all alone you sit at your wooden table, and scribble symbols on a piece of leather.

Even the symbols were young back then.

Were the valleys of Anatolia as green back then ?

Did the wind shake the trees at night ?

Did the stars speak to the Greeks?…

Where were the Egyptians, and where were the Hittites?

Egyptians back then did not speak the way they do today.

What did the young Pharaoh think, as he looked across the Nile.
and saw the stars?
Did he know he would die?

…

Were there crocodiles in the Nile?

The Greeks called it the krokodil, the worm of the stones.
Surely, they were right, and beautiful in their naming, for the basilisk has scales as harsh as stone, and was known even back then for eating stones.

" How doth the little crocodile
            Improve his shining tail
  And pour the waters of the Nile
           On every golden scale!

   How cheerfully he seems to grin,
            How neatly spreads his claws,
   And welcomes little fishes in
          With gently smiling jaws!"
                                  Lewis Carroll

…

Did the pharaoh know his empire would collapse?

Did the kings know, their inherited empire, passed down from generation to generation, the culmination of MILLENIA of work, would just vanish?

Would the poems be lost

would the songs be lost

will we lose the songs

will i lose my songs

kim söyleyecek bu şarkıları

biz gittikten sonra