To Live Longer (poetry)

To Live Longer

After two days you spent out of the city,

When you stepped on the city airport,

Alas, I was happy as if

You wouldn’t come back, but decided at once to come back.

And this poem is against economic growth, he says

“Don’t go to another city”, I can’t bear this city alone.

Let’s remove the money you would spend for air tickets

From the Gross Domestic Product.

I used to like the city

To which you went for fireworks, but now,

While I would light the sky by many fireworks for you,

It doesn’t make sense for Anita to go far from the city.

This poem can’t be a part of performance plans, neither job applications

Nor the complaint boxes of skyscrapers.

This poem mingles with clandestine kisses on elevators.

Those elevators, as far as I heard,

Do not stop at any levels, they go up to the heights of sky.

Your hands seem to be small, your eyes too, from a distance.

And according to what the physicist grandfather says,

I would only see your past, when I looked at you from a distance

As the light travels to your face.

Just because of this, leave the past apart now,

Tell me what is to come, who cares what has left.

Those two days you spent out of the city,

I will mark them on my calendar by black ink.

I will live longer only if

Those black days on my calendar would be a few.

Ulaş Başar Gezgin

29.03.2009, Ho Chi Minh City, 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.