Comparison
Twelwe midnight exactly
two mated hands
presice
like Kurds and sorrow
Twelwe o’clock midnight
like my imagination
a clean bright dinner table
twenty cigarettes
and only one key word
after one o’clock
two separate hands of the clock
like me and the eye of my country
After two o’clock
like exiles and asylum seekers
pen, paper and items on the table
all disparate and confused
After three o’clock
ashtrays full of butts
and tobbaco ash
a room full of smoke
Beside it
a sleeping poet
a vigilant poem
I smell the colours
At nigh I pine for the return of a bird
To come back to my home
To re-enter my eyes
To re-enter my soul
and sing
I
Oh God
Where is my bird?
Oh God
Can I have an answer!
Counting
If you could count every single leaf
in this garden,
if you could count all the big and little fish
of this ocean,
if you could count all the birds
during their migration
from the north to the south
and
from the south to the north,
then I would also promise
to count every
single victim
of this beloved Kurdistan!
Sherko Bekes, son of Faiq Bekes, is one of the most famous Kurdish poets. Sherko was born in 1940 in Sulaymania in Southern Kurdistan. He was educated in Sulaymania and Bagdad and published his first collection of poems there in 1968. His poems reflect his close association with the Kurdish liberation movement which he joined in 1965, working in the movement’s radio station - the Voice of Kurdistan. During the period 1984 - 1987, he lived with the Kurdish peshmergas (freedom fighters). Since 1987, Sherko Bekes has lived in Sweden where continues to write. In 1987 he was awarded the Swedish PEN Club’s Tucholsky Prize. In the same year he was awarded the freedom of the city of Florence. (Summary from Index on Censorship, by H Sinjari, 1988)
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