Best Famous Istanbul Poems

Here is a collection of the all-time best famous Istanbul poems. This is a select list of the best famous Istanbul poetry. Reading, writing, and enjoying famous Istanbul poetry (as well as classical and contemporary poems) is a great past time. These top poems are the best examples of istanbul poems.

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• All Famous Istanbul Poems

Written by Nazim Hikmet | Things I Didnt Know I Loved it's 1962 March 28th I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train night is falling I never knew I liked night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain I don't like comparing nightfall to a tired bird I didn't know I loved the earth can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it I've never worked the earth it must be my only Platonic love and here I've loved rivers all this time whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills European hills crowned with chateaus or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see I know you can't wash in the same river even once I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow I know this has troubled people before and will trouble those after me I know all this has been said a thousand times before and will be said after me I didn't know I loved the sky cloudy or clear the blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodino in prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish I hear voices not from the blue vault but from the yard the guards are beating someone again I didn't know I loved trees bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino they come upon me in winter noble and modest beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish "the poplars of Izmir losing their leaves. . . they call me The Knife. . . lover like a young tree. . . I blow stately mansions sky-high" in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen handkerchief to a pine bough for luck I never knew I loved roads even the asphalt kind Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea Koktebele formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish the two of us inside a closed box the world flows past on both sides distant and mute I was never so close to anyone in my life bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and Geredé when I was eighteen apart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon they could take and at eighteen our lives are what we value least I've written this somewhere before wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the shadow play Ramazan night a paper lantern leading the way maybe nothing like this ever happened maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy going to the shadow play Ramazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand his grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coat with a sable collar over his robe and there's a lantern in the servant's hand and I can't contain myself for joy flowers come to mind for some reason poppies cactuses jonquils in the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul I kissed Marika fresh almonds on her breath I was seventeen my heart on a swing touched the sky I didn't know I loved flowers friends sent me three red carnations in prison I just remembered the stars I love them too whether I'm floored watching them from below or whether I'm flying at their side I have some questions for the cosmonauts were the stars much bigger did they look like huge jewels on black velvet or apricots on orange did you feel proud to get closer to the stars I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine now don't be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or abstract well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to say they were terribly figurative and concrete my heart was in my mouth looking at them they are our endless desire to grasp things seeing them I could even think of death and not feel at all sad I never knew I loved the cosmos snow flashes in front of my eyes both heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind I didn't know I liked snow I never knew I loved the sun even when setting cherry-red as now in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors but you aren't about to paint it that way I didn't know I loved the sea except the Sea of Azov or how much I didn't know I loved clouds whether I'm under or up above them whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois strikes me I like it I didn't know I liked rain whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved rain but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train is it because I lit my sixth cigarette one alone could kill me is it because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue the train plunges on through the pitch-black night I never knew I liked the night pitch-black sparks fly from the engine I didn't know I loved sparks I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty to find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return 19 April 1962 Moscow

Written by Suleiman the Magnificent | Throne of my lonely niche Throne of my lonely niche, my wealth, my love, my moonlight. My most sincere friend, my confidant, my very existence, my Sultan The most beautiful among the beautiful... My springtime, my merry faced love, my daytime, my sweetheart, laughing leaf... My plants, my sweet, my rose, the one only who does not distress me in this world... My Istanbul, my Caraman, the earth of my Anatolia My Badakhshanmy Baghdad, my Khorasan My woman of the beautiful hair, my love of the slanted brow, my love of eyes full of mischief... I'll sing your praises always I, lover of the tormented heart, Muhibbi of the eyes full of tears, I am happy.

Written by Gregory Corso | Gregory Corso Budger of history Brake of time You Bomb Toy of universe Grandest of all snatched sky I cannot hate you Do I hate the mischievous thunderbolt the jawbone of an ass The bumpy club of One Million B.C. the mace the flail the axe Catapult Da Vinci tomahawk Cochise flintlock Kidd dagger Rathbone Ah and the sad desparate gun of Verlaine Pushkin Dillinger Bogart And hath not St. Michael a burning sword St. George a lance David a sling Bomb you are as cruel as man makes you and you're no crueller than cancer All Man hates you they'd rather die by car-crash lightning drowning Falling off a roof electric-chair heart-attack old age old age O Bomb They'd rather die by anything but you Death's finger is free-lance Not up to man whether you boom or not Death has long since distributed its categorical blue I sing thee Bomb Death's extravagance Death's jubilee Gem of Death's supremest blue The flyer will crash his death will differ with the climbor who'll fall to die by cobra is not to die by bad pork Some die by swamp some by sea and some by the bushy-haired man in the night O there are deaths like witches of Arc Scarey deaths like Boris Karloff No-feeling deaths like birth-death sadless deaths like old pain Bowery Abandoned deaths like Capital Punishment stately deaths like senators And unthinkable deaths like Harpo Marx girls on Vogue covers my own I do not know just how horrible Bombdeath is I can only imagine Yet no other death I know has so laughable a preview I scope a city New York City streaming starkeyed subway shelter Scores and scores A fumble of humanity High heels bend Hats whelming away Youth forgetting their combs Ladies not knowing what to do with their shopping bags Unperturbed gum machines Yet dangerous 3rd rail Ritz Brothers from the Bronx caught in the A train The smiling Schenley poster will always smile Impish death Satyr Bomb Bombdeath Turtles exploding over Istanbul The jaguar's flying foot soon to sink in arctic snow Penguins plunged against the Sphinx The top of the Empire state arrowed in a broccoli field in Sicily Eiffel shaped like a C in Magnolia Gardens St. Sophia peeling over Sudan O athletic Death Sportive Bomb the temples of ancient times their grand ruin ceased Electrons Protons Neutrons gathering Hersperean hair walking the dolorous gulf of Arcady joining marble helmsmen entering the final ampitheater with a hymnody feeling of all Troys heralding cypressean torches racing plumes and banners and yet knowing Homer with a step of grace Lo the visiting team of Present the home team of Past Lyre and tube together joined Hark the hotdog soda olive grape gala galaxy robed and uniformed commissary O the happy stands Ethereal root and cheer and boo The billioned all-time attendance The Zeusian pandemonium Hermes racing Owens The Spitball of Buddha Christ striking out Luther stealing third Planeterium Death Hosannah Bomb Gush the final rose O Spring Bomb Come with thy gown of dynamite green unmenace Nature's inviolate eye Before you the wimpled Past behind you the hallooing Future O Bomb Bound in the grassy clarion air like the fox of the tally-ho thy field the universe thy hedge the geo Leap Bomb bound Bomb frolic zig and zag The stars a swarm of bees in thy binging bag Stick angels on your jubilee feet wheels of rainlight on your bunky seat You are due and behold you are due and the heavens are with you hosanna incalescent glorious liaison BOMB O havoc antiphony molten cleft BOOM Bomb mark infinity a sudden furnace spread thy multitudinous encompassed Sweep set forth awful agenda Carrion stars charnel planets carcass elements Corpse the universe tee-hee finger-in-the-mouth hop over its long long dead Nor From thy nimbled matted spastic eye exhaust deluges of celestial ghouls From thy appellational womb spew birth-gusts of of great worms Rip open your belly Bomb from your belly outflock vulturic salutations Battle forth your spangled hyena finger stumps along the brink of Paradise O Bomb O final Pied Piper both sun and firefly behind your shock waltz God abandoned mock-nude beneath His thin false-talc's apocalypse He cannot hear thy flute's happy-the-day profanations He is spilled deaf into the Silencer's warty ear His Kingdom an eternity of crude wax Clogged clarions untrumpet Him Sealed angels unsing Him A thunderless God A dead God O Bomb thy BOOM His tomb That I lean forward on a desk of science an astrologer dabbling in dragon prose half-smart about wars bombs especially bombs That I am unable to hate what is necessary to love That I can't exist in a world that consents a child in a park a man dying in an electric-chair That I am able to laugh at all things all that I know and do not know thus to conceal my pain That I say I am a poet and therefore love all man knowing my words to be the acquainted prophecy of all men and my unwords no less an acquaintanceship That I am manifold a man pursuing the big lies of gold or a poet roaming in bright ashes or that which I imagine myself to be a shark-toothed sleep a man-eater of dreams I need not then be all-smart about bombs Happily so for if I felt bombs were caterpillars I'd doubt not they'd become butterflies There is a hell for bombs They're there I see them there They sit in bits and sing songs mostly German songs And two very long American songs and they wish there were more songs especially Russian and Chinese songs and some more very long American songs Poor little Bomb that'll never be an Eskimo song I love thee I want to put a lollipop in thy furcal mouth A wig of Goldilocks on thy baldy bean and have you skip with me Hansel and Gretel along the Hollywoodian screen O Bomb in which all lovely things moral and physical anxiously participate O fairylike plucked from the grandest universe tree O piece of heaven which gives both mountain and anthill a sun I am standing before your fantastic lily door I bring you Midgardian roses Arcadian musk Reputed cosmetics from the girls of heaven Welcome me fear not thy opened door nor thy cold ghost's grey memory nor the pimps of indefinite weather their cruel terrestial thaw Oppenheimer is seated in the dark pocket of Light Fermi is dry in Death's Mozambique Einstein his mythmouth a barnacled wreath on the moon-squid's head Let me in Bomb rise from that pregnant-rat corner nor fear the raised-broom nations of the world O Bomb I love you I want to kiss your clank eat your boom You are a paean an acme of scream a lyric hat of Mister Thunder O resound thy tanky knees BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM ye skies and BOOM ye suns BOOM BOOM ye moons ye stars BOOM nights ye BOOM ye days ye BOOM BOOM BOOM ye winds ye clouds ye rains go BANG ye lakes ye oceans BING Barracuda BOOM and cougar BOOM Ubangi BOOM orangutang BING BANG BONG BOOM bee bear baboon ye BANG ye BONG ye BING the tail the fin the wing Yes Yes into our midst a bomb will fall Flowers will leap in joy their roots aching Fields will kneel proud beneath the halleluyahs of the wind Pinkbombs will blossom Elkbombs will perk their ears Ah many a bomb that day will awe the bird a gentle look Yet not enough to say a bomb will fall or even contend celestial fire goes out Know that the earth will madonna the Bomb that in the hearts of men to come more bombs will be born magisterial bombs wrapped in ermine all beautiful and they'll sit plunk on earth's grumpy empires fierce with moustaches of gold

Written by Allen Ginsberg | Footnote To Howl Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy! The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and hand and ******* holy! Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere is holy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's an angel! The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman is holy as you my soul are holy! The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy! Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holy Kerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas- sady holy the unknown buggered and suffering beggars holy the hideous human angels! Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocks of the grandfathers of Kansas! Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace & junk & drums! Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holy the cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy the mysterious rivers of tears under the streets! Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of the middle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell- ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles! Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria & Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy Moscow Holy Istanbul! Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy the clocks in space holy the fourth dimension holy the fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch! Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy the locomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina- tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy the abyss! Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours! bodies! suffering! magnanimity! Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul! Berkeley 1955

Written by Nazim Hikmet | Angina Pectoris If half my heart is here, doctor, the other half is in China with the army flowing toward the Yellow River. And, every morning, doctor, every morning at sunrise my heart is shot in Greece. And every night,c doctor, when the prisoners are asleep and the infirmary is deserted, my heart stops at a run-down old house in Istanbul. And then after ten years all i have to offer my poor people is this apple in my hand, doctor, one read apple: my heart. And that, doctor, that is the reason for this angina pectoris-- not nicotine, prison, or arteriosclerosis. I look at the night through the bars, and despite the weight on my chest my heart still beats with the most distant stars.