I Give Thanks to You Şiiri - Bahar Ada

Your light is a gift to the depths of my darkness.
The light is a dream; my darkness, real.
It is by dream that reality exists.
You are the very thing of which you are a part.
I give thanks to you.

For healing the calloused lifelines
in the palms of those before my time,
for making the unknown known,
for creating what I had denied—
I give thanks to you.

I am a lover to the pen, a friend to the page.
For uniting the friendships I selfishly let rot
in faithless drawers with my beloved,
I give thanks to you.

What stained the pupils of yellowish seas
that my broken boat struck your shores
with half a breath, helplessly?

I scattered on my own
and melted into the delicate tone of your sleep.
Loneliness never bore the name hope.
Hope is a hollow, boiling, lying pot.
My loneliness is called joy, and joy—
is you.
I give thanks to you.

I realized with you:
Reality turns to wave,
Dreams become water.

One side of me was a bowed leaf,
The other, earth.
Earth breathes through green...
I learned this with you.

I thought I was the ship itself,
sailing endless oceans—
but I was only a wooden rowboat,
inside a grand ship...
and I saw this with you.

For ages I had traveled within
that grand ship.
When the famed vessel of love collapsed
after a storm of fury,
only the rowboat of mercy
remained afloat on brave waves.

I had clung to both oars of love,
pulling, pulling—until weak.
One oar was the face of romance,
the other, of realism.
One side danced with dreams,
the other mocked existence.

My hands—thin, fragile,
wounded but resilient,
worn yet tireless—
gripped those oars.
Red trickled from my nails,
my boat blood-soaked.
One side of me, friend; the other, lover.
I give thanks to you.

A swooning death,
with cramps, estranged me from myself,
and through screams, I was born again into soil—
for the smallest reasons.

My stomach pulls into my back.
A preparation for new memories.
The forbidden bodies of false consolations
leave behind antique regrets—
as the rudder of the ship,
clueless of direction, tips and collapses,
the rowboat of mercy listens to seagull cries.
Unknowingly, I was rewinding forward—
and thought I was drifting further from myself,
but all along I was moving ahead.
With a swooning death,
I was being born again—unaware.
I give thanks to you.

Death was cast into the boundless blue deep.
In the dense dark of blue,
I found the light.
The closer I sank to the bottom,
the more your light wrapped my body.
And I rejoiced—
like a baby nursing for the first time.
I thought I was prisoner to words,
but the waters filled me from within.
While the creatures of blue sang,
I remained unaware of it all.

To say “I give thanks to you”
is to say “I love you.”
I understand now.
I understand:
there is no such thing as being too late in life.
The point is being too early for the late.
Nature wakes early—
to sleep earlier the next day.
Late is laziness, and laziness is loss.
Only the lazy who are aware of it
achieve triumph.
One must accept their sloth as it is.
The one lost in failure
must awaken to defeat—
to find the strength to strive again.
I understand.

Motivation is the fire of motion and moving others.
It was the motor of my little boat.
You are my fire.
Without thinking,
wild,
weak,
and with half-breaths,
I move toward your shores…
I understand.
I give thanks to you.

I understand that true understanding
means forgetting what you once understood.
Hard, isn’t it—forgetting?
And that’s why it’s so hard to understand.
Forgetting only forgets
when gifted to another.
Among beauties tangled with seduction and chaos,
forgetting is the ripest of them all.
The most magnificent of curses.

To understand is to be silent,
and its ancestor—forgetting.
I miss sitting at the knees of my elders.
To be apart is the cruelest punishment.
In my peacock cries,
I’ve tied myself to sins... I understand.
I give thanks to you.

When I forgot what I once understood,
the clouds in your chest
poured loneliness onto my face.
Now the land is covered in union,
in the greeting of a white dove.
Your powerful wind is the cause
of the mistaken rain falling on my soul.

To divide is to subtract,
but subtraction brings us together.
If we are not divided,
we cannot multiply.
If we do not multiply,
we cannot become one.
That is breath in the home of life... I understand.

Divide me—so we may multiply from that break.
And in this way, with you,
this self of mine would never tire,
giving thanks to you.

“Only God can be thanked,”
the absurd say.
Did you believe that too, my love?
When your baby-spoken words
mixed with the stubbornness of white-bearded goats,
you settled with mocking tenderness
onto the forehead of my soul,
and left a smile in my dark.
My darkness was love... I understand.
I give thanks to you.

There are bitter seaweed remains between my teeth—
leftovers from the fire of motivation.
How hard it is to move,
when drowning in details.
The plans of thought trip the motion.
I must have become detailed in you,
because every goddess of movement I asked about you
said, “No.”
Said, “They won’t come.”

Come!
Come, so we may move!
I’ve had enough of the details!
I no longer seek you in the fine streams of fine thoughts.
I move.
I give thanks to you.

Mix me into your sand.
Let them build castles from us
on the shores of your beaches.
Let every bare-bottomed dream bear witness,
as they stroll around our joy.
Let every breath drown in melody.
Let us dance while singing.
Let us be reborn—
and they too, one by one,
be reborn in death.

My little boat was a dream of myself.
When I crashed into you,
let blood scatter into my blue seas.
Let my blood vanish
into the veins of your light.

You became a fish in my seas.
As you let your body drift
from one side to the other,
follow the other selves of us.
You've held me by my cheeks,
and my rivers are soaked in dimples.
I shrank myself and shrank—
and then grew again into you.
I give thanks to you.

What strange emotion are we?
To darken in light,
to shine in darkness.
My dawns, dyed in black
in the depths of my blues—
you painted white
onto my living shroud.
And I was being born with death.
In your hands...
What a strange thing—
to die in you
is to awaken in myself... I understand.

To understand is to forget you,
To forget is to remember you,
To remember is to understand you.

What you think you are a part of—
is your own self.
I give thanks to you.

Gulê