I don’t know if other writers who are poets as well as novelists find, like I do, that when they are writing fiction poems leak through. Rarely do these end up in the finished work—they really don’t fit. But it seems—unfair—not to admit their existence. There could be, I suppose, waiting for an anthologist with the curiosity to follow this up, a book to be made of such poems. The poems below belong to several different voices. A young woman, a narrator, a lover….

Poetry from a Novel in Progress:

In this place, small as the beginning of Time
Where my mind walks through flowers
On its own and with gravity
Walks with the roundness of oranges and lemons
As it measures its steps

Walks fearfully
Walks and sings anyway
I’d like to sleep as if I were still a girl
With nothing on my mind but arrivals

*

Everything had to be born
Even heaven and earth

Before there was water
There was nothing

And once there was water
The slime of the earth

Began to slip and slide

Yahweh and his Beloved
Joined, and blew the breath

Of soul into the clay-made human
And soon, even in the garden

Made for the Created One

Even among the trees and birds
And at the junction of rivers

That brought news of gold
And lapis lazuli from far places—vast

Material blessings—

Profound loneliness prevailed… even
After such remarkable beauty

Then the woman already existing
Stepped aside from the man

So they could look at each other
And be happy

*

Then they slept together
Man and woman, tight as thieves
And the woman conceived

What pleasure they took
In their bodies--they were young

As the world, the night drank them down
‘Til dawn, and all day long

They were love-making, always
They scarcely supped or

Touched ground

The children worked
Neither seen nor heard

One boy, Cain, tilled the soil
The other, Abel, watched flocks: the stars pressed

At his soul, he took flight: Cain, lonely as grass
Wrenched at stones; his back hurt

His hands ached, the damp
Flayed his joints: wash, cook, plant, harvest—

Oi vey!

Abel sang, played flute, slept warm between sheep
Cold cold was Cain, his sadness a blight: it rained

It snowed without respite
It was right to give thanks

Yet one boy grew straight, the other bent
One hardly slept, the other dreamt

Yahweh preferred blood
To the labour for bread

He thrived on it – hurt Cain’s heart
Who was envious and harnessed

They were in the field, these boys
One cheerful, one jealous

It wasn’t fair, it was hard
To bear and not care

And Cain did

And brought hatred, murder and death
To the world

As Yahweh had willed it

*

Sleepless sailors
Aim for streets
Their feet drag water
From other worlds

Others arrive and leave
But these navigators can only begin

Like an unfinished play
Under the sun of imagined seas
Are those who live in houses
And watch from balconies

*

In a dark wood
Trees surround you, but
Their branches fill with birds
A wing; an iridescent eye
Such fire as the Phoenix brings

The woods grizzle with rain
Light drains, and is cold
You are song, although you’ve lost
Your singing
Be your ears, until your voice takes hold
And you can view
Blue wings, a flash of gold

Everything is made
Put your tongue out to the rain
And claim.

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Some of the best books I’ve found have turned up in library discard sales: there’s a cart of these near the front door of most of the libraries in my area. For a dollar or two you can buy whatever the library has decided no longer belongs on its shelves.  How-To books, children’s books, thrillers and mysteries predominate: but there are occasional gems.

I don’t know how A Portrait of a Turkish Family ended up in the bin at the Bruce Hutchison library—it hadn’t come from the stacks, so was likely a gift from a Library Friend. Tucked inside it was  a flyer from the English language Turkish Daily News, and there’s a Turkish lira price sticker on the back. My edition is a reprint (Eland Publishing, London, 2004) of the original 1950 Gollancz publication. The front cover quote, from Robert Fox(The Daily Telegraph) sums it up: ‘This book is a little masterpiece.’

Irfan Orga’s memoir, set in Istanbul, begins with his birth in 1908 into a prosperous and cultured family and ends with the death of his mother in 1940. In many ways, the story is his mother’s: her struggle to raise her children through a series of tragedies which starts with the death of her husband, Irfan’s father, along with hundreds of thousands of other Turkish men, in the First World War all the way to—well, I won’t explain what happens : but the family’s story reveals the impact of national and global social and political events on the most intimate details of their lives and relationships as seen through the eyes of an alert, articulate and desperate boy.  Irfan’s ability to draw character, evoke place is astonishing: the writing, on every page, is clear and beautiful. Some of the scenes—the grandmother’s visit to the Hamam; the young Irfan’s circumcision, are very funny; and others of poverty and cruelty and despair are so painful that I’m loathe to remember them.  Over all circles Irfan’s determination to be honest in his portrayal, to do so with general sensitivity but unsparingly of himself.  His tone and accomplishment make me think of a concert violinist and the depth and meaning it is possible to convey through sound: this book resonates.

There’s no point in my sounding like a puff piece:  so I’ll quote a paragraph to give the flavour. What I can’t do—and what makes this a slow book read—is to convey the reach and range of the book: it’s grasp of the story of a country, a people, and a family as they undergo profound change (remember this is the period of the end of Ottoman culture and of Turkey’s westernization) makes this a reading experience during which you want to pause and rest and reflect on your own experiences and ideas, and to consider how they are altered through the lens of Irfan Orga’s account.

With apologies for being unable to write the Turkish names with correct orthography:

“When the summer of that year was upon us we did not even have dry bread in the school and the old women used to take us to a place called Fenerbahce, where grew many big sakiz-agaci (gum trees), where the small red, resinous berries grew in thick clusters.  We used to throw stones into the trees, sometimes being lucky enough to knock down the berries into the long, wild grass.  These we would scramble madly for, knocking each other down to find the berries to eat them avidly, like little animals. They had a sour taste but were curiously satisfying and we used to fill our pockets, taking them back with us to the school to eat during the night.  At other times we would go to Fikir Tepesi, where we would pull and eat kuzu-kulagi (sorrel), helping the younger amongst  us to choose the right grasses.  We would search at Kalamis for bayir-trupu (small white radishes), which gave us a raking thirst. And many times I remember eating the almond-blossom from the trees, stuffing the blooms into my ever-hungry mouth.  Once in a sea field, bounding one side of our gardens, soldiers were pulling broad beans and throwing the green stalks to the edge of the field, the edge nearest our palings. We put our fingers through and took the stalks, sucking them afterwards with great relish.”

Descriptive passages, such as this, are anchored in event and character and in the matter-of-factness with which a child copes with circumstance. “It became the custom amongst us to carry salt and red pepper in little bags concealed about our person and if we were  ever lucky enough to find potato peelings or raw aubergine skins, we would wash them at the pump, expertly mix them with the contents of our little bags and eat them when we were desperate with hunger.”

If ever the thought drifts through your mind that people create their own destinies and it is lack of courage or intelligence or both that govern ‘success’ this book should put an end to it.  Irfan Orga’s work reminds me, in its combination of scale and particularity of Tolstoy, and in the acuteness of his eye of Laurie Lee.  This book is a great legacy.

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