And into the ceilings seeps a smell of tallowFrom the candles so quietly quenchedAnd people looking right looking leftIn haste bury something so nobody sees at allAnd then down the long boulevard they runAnd at night from the flocks a sheep goes missingAnd people looking right looking left passIn haste cross over one last time before they dieThen later in solitude they sit and lickA very old bone they’d plucked from the walls
Bone
Behçet Necatigil
Translated from the Turkish by Neil P. Doherty
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“Bone” from Best Literary Translations 2024: edited by Jane Hirshfield.
Translated by Neil P. Doherty.
Published by Deep Vellum Publishing on April 9, 2024.
Copyright © 2024 by Neil P. Doherty.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
Behçet Necatigil (1916-1979) stands outside the main movements of modern Turkish Poetry as an original and innovative voice. His early poetry was often narrative and highly atmospheric but over the years he purged his work of this element and wrote very concentrated elliptical verse that utilized all the properties of the Turkish language. He also wrote a number of highly regarded radio plays and translated widely from German and Persian.
Neil P. Doherty, originally from Kildare, Ireland, resident in Istanbul since 1995. He is a translator of Turkish prose and poetry. His translations have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Poetry Wales, The Dreaming Machine, The Antonym, The Honest Ulsterman, The Seattle Star and The Berlin Quarterly. He is currently working on an anthology of Turkish Poetry for Dedalus Poetry, Dublin and a selection of Behçet Necatigil’s poetry for The Antonym.
Best Literary Translations 2024 features both contemporary and historical poetry and prose originally written in nineteen languages—including some not commonly seen in U.S. translations, such as Burmese, Kurdish, Tigrinya, and Wayuu—brought into English by thirty-eight of the most talented translators working today. These poems, short stories, essays, and hybrid pieces were drawn from nominated works published in U.S. literary journals during 2023 that spanned more than eighty countries and nearly sixty languages. The four series coeditors, Noh Anothai, Wendy Call, Öykü Tekten, and Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, selected the finalists from over five hundred nominations.
By spotlighting work from top literary journals, Best Literary Translations honors the excellent literature created every year by a diverse range of authors and translators and will continue to expand the canon of global literatures in English translation, showcasing the bold and brilliant work of contemporary translators and editors annually, for years to come.
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