A PARTICULAR
In twenty minutes
it will be 9:15, a particular
that will come against us all:
the student making sense
of a Brahms sonata, another
boiling macaroni in a chipped
aluminum pot, or you,
barefoot and considering
your barriers—who made them?—
between Bursa and the Angel Road.
But you will tell me more,
that the cherry blossoms
south of Izmir aren’t
as pink as they used to be,
that your mother called
with a month of news.
You will write three words:
What Is Time?
with that question mark
I’m supposed to know,
that swirl and dot which make
your chest, that pause we share
in the knowledge of too much
or none at all. I will say
I loved you at 9:15, a surrender,
a flaw in a Sadık Göktuna
landscape being studied
right now, being questioned
by a student in Istanbul
who knows neither past nor future.