For Those Who Will Sail Across the Oceans (poetry)

For Those Who Will Sail Across the Oceans

A palm extends her neck towards the ocean

So that her shadow would fall on seaweeds, on fish.

The lands are narrow for her or

The ocean is immense, much more immense.

If the salty water won’t cool my branches,

Let my head touch the dunes and not the clouds.

Let my leaves fall on blue depths

Rather than decaying in the soil.

Let a sailor disperse my seeds, at first

On the deck washed ceaselessly by salty water

Let him carry me to unexplored lands, never seen before

So that my shadow may cover all the oceans.

When one day, an ax of a human hand will slide 

Into my truck that was stretched due to my extending for a long time,

Let my inside be comrade to the depths,

Out of me, a long, a long cooling.

You too extended your neck like that palm,

Even if your shadow fall on other lands, other people,

Your country will always welcome your roots,

Even if your blue voyage lasts for a millenium.

Ulaş Başar Gezgin

15.03.2009, HCMC, Vietnam

Gezgin, U.B. (2017). For Those Who Will Sail Across The Oceans: An Explorer’s Vietnam Poems.

POETRY BOOKS IN ENGLISH AND OTHER LANGUAGES / İNGİLİZCE VE DİĞER DİLLERDE ŞİİR KİTAPLARI 1. Gezgin, U.B. (2017). Yağmur Sonrası/ After Rain / После дождя / Diğer Dillerdeki Gezgin Şiirleri: Rusça, İngilizce, Tayca, Azerbaycanca, Vietnamca, İspanyolca ve Japonca [Gezgin’s Poetry in Other Languages: Russian, English, Thai, Azerbaijani, Vietnamese, Spanish and Japanese]. 2. Gezgin, U.B. (2017). You, I and Our Son - Poems of Peace, Longing and Love from Vietnam 3. Gezgin, U.B. (2017). For Those Who Will Sail Across The Oceans: An Explorer’s Vietnam Poems. 4. Gezgin, U. B. (2007). On a Tablet – English Poems by Ulas Basar Gezgin. Lulu.