I Give Praise to Flight

for Menna Elfyn, in response to her poem The Piper

I give praise to the embraces of women
that reach right into my cell
I give praise to the wind's own knowing
that it is wind.  I am without a door,  yet my wings
splay wide as an atlas. Birds love me.
I hear that delight in their songs
and the quiet of these blues and greens
gives me peace. There is a stairway
that leads to the very height of life.
 
I love the birds because we're brothers in hunger,
as the window creaks with tiredness in its frame.
So then sing your song, beautiful bird.
Let us go blazing to the seas, to my childhood,
when I believed in all the stories, to the times when
I fell and fell, grazing my knees,
to the pain of my hand when it would bleed.
To the wound of the skies and the earth.
To the pure, bright experiment of rain.
I am with the birds.
Life accepts me again.
 
Ilhan Sami Çomak, August 2020
translated by C.Stockford