[Pen-l] Re: Obituary for Paul Phillips

["Sabri Oncu" <sabri.oncu@xxxxxxxxx>]

Here is a poem I translated from Turkish a while ago. The translation
is miserable but that was all I was able to do. Although I was about
two decades junior to him, I have always felt that Paul and I were
brothers, who came from the same family mentioned below.

To Paul's memory.

Sabri

+++++

My father Abdulaziz Efendi,
Searched for a treasure throughout his life,
As if himself buried it.
No one else knew where it was buried,
Before finding what he searched for,
Exhausted in his eighty-three.

I come from a diggers' family.
Some of us dig for gold, some of us for love,
Yet, all of us in our hearts have this fantasy.
I know I can never find it,
But still search for the nonexistent,
And die before finding it, just like my daddy.

Our kind is going extinct as the time goes by my son!
Continue this inheritance from our past,
Don't let this arthritis dry for the humankind,
Even if you know there does not one, search for a treasure imagined in
your mind,
For to live is to search for the treasure buried in your heart.

Aziz Nesin, 1983
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