"quietly to night"*

 "in the evening the water in our jug is finished and perched on stone, or sometimes concrete, our birds all fly away...

one piece of lokum remains on the rose-patterned plate...
the fruit on the branch consumes night for us...

if they submit quietly to night and lose their lives in all their fineness, new generations will arise and sing the songs behind the mountain,

so the sail can be furled all day with song,

so if water wants the sea it can reach it,

or if it wants it can end on the plain,

so the lokum can remain on the rose-patterned plate."*

[*selected lines excerpted from Agamemnon I by Oktay RIFAT (1914-1988), translated from the Turkish by Ruth Christie and Richard McKane in Tablet and Pen:: Literary Landscapes from The Modern Middle East, A Words Without Borders Anthology Edited by Reza ASLAN, Copyright 2011, W.W. Norton & Company]