ON A TABLET (poetry)

ON A TABLET

This tablet,

Had come a long way

From the very core of the Earth...

So hot, so intense...

This tablet,

Travelled too much

Along the oceans...

So far, so immense...

Spartacus had his omelet on it,

Before his final fight...

It was the only thing

The slaves had...

So rare, more precious than a diamond...

The German peasants carried it as a shield,

The medieval people in age but not in mind...

The African slaves used it efficiently,

As an umbrella against hot sky...

So useful, so relieving...

When Ho Chi Minh had his gun,

He was not alone...

His people melting it in a pot,

Produced tanks, bombs, planes...

So volatile, so conformist...

Ghandi had it as his self-image,

Seeing himself at the mirror...

A tablet, incomprehensible,

But knows where to stand on the world...

So conscious, so humble...

Lumumba had it as a wall-paper,

In his office, in his house...

When the Sun falls on the walls,

It spreads onto Africa...

So huge, so tender...

Behrengi had it a half-century ago,

On the shores of river Araxes,

As the sword of his little, black fish.

He knows where it went too...

So tiny, so heavy...

It became a standard in Marx’s hands,

From Europe to Asia...

What he wrote in British Museum,

Did not so much differ from it...

So laborious, so familiar...

What it reads? Can you see it?

What can Indian eyes see,

How would Indian hands touch,

When the dawn creeps in it?..

Equality, brotherhood, freedom and love!

Nothing more says the tablet,

People had the rest of the things;

Spartacus, German peasants, Ho Chi Minh, African slaves,

Ghandi, Lumumba, Behrengi, Marx...

That is why life’s worth living, air’s worth breathing...

And that is why I love you to be equal, brother and free!..

Hold the tablet tightly and caress it,

Since it is the sole relic of humanity...

Ulaş Başar Gezgin

05.16.2002

Gezgin, U. B. (2007). On a Tablet – English Poems by Ulas Basar Gezgin. Lulu.

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.