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By Dr Kamal Mirawdeli:
Sherko Bekas
Şêrko Bêkes (2 May 1940 – 4 August 2013), a leading contemporary Kurdish poet died in Sweden on 4 August 2013 from lung cancer. He is known for the amazing continuity of his creative and prolific poetic career over almost half a century. He has produced an astonishing Poetic Record and Archive of modern Kurdish history blending beauty, music, colour, pain, anger, suffering, resistance, tragedy, nostalgia, vision and dreams in the process of a long poetic Odyssey that will remain forever a proud monument of his achievement and an invaluable heritage awarded to his nation. His works include lyric, poster poems, dramatic poetry and poetic drama, and narrative poetry with variety of themes, forms and styles.
His departure, though expected, was too shocking for me to bear or put in words.
However, to console my heart and express my gratitude to my dear friend and our great immortal poet, I wrote three short poems one a day before his death and two after the news of his final journey. This is the translation of one of them from the original Kurdish.
What can I say about Sherko?
What can be said about Sherko?
He was just one word: poetry.
This is Sherko in a word with one thousand colours
This is Sherko in a word with one thousand sounds
This is Sherko in one wayfarer word
This is Sherko in one river rhythm
He was a tear dropped from her mother’s eye
Fell on the green leaf of a spring oak tree
She sucked it to the depths of her inner self
To the midst of her hard and wounded history
To the highest proud summit of Ararat
The infinite vision of beauty, happiness and freedom.
He grew and grew and became a well
He became a water spring of Slemani
Took to the road
He became a stream
A river of songs
For the four parts of his Kurdistan.
From that day on
Sherko was restless
Knowing no break, stopping at no barrier,
He filled all Kurdish homes with his music
He painted all wanderers’ tents with his colours
From then on, the River shared our cries
From then on the River, wore all the waves of history’s sufferings
He flowed and flowed
Heading to the end of the world
Till the River became a Sea.
Then the River immersed in His own sea
He did not die, he disappeared inside Himself
He did not die, he was lost by His own view
Otherwise, this River
Is clearly evident to all of us
He is the palanquin of Autumn tears
The thunder of Winter’s wrath
The burning embers inside July’s heart
The roaring of Spring’s colourful dreams.
He is a well
A river
A wave
A sea
With one end on Goyzha
The other in the other end of the world.
(2)
Sherko’s journey was poetry
Sherko’s destiny was poetry
His moan and groan was poetry
His spectacles was poetry
Every single hair around and over his forehead was poetry
Every deep and sharp stare of him was poetry
Every sigh of suffering and impulse of weeping was poetry
Every piece of his written papers was poetry
Every piece of his discarded papers was poetry
Every deep breath of his smoking was poetry
All ashes and remains in his cigarette ashtray was poetry
Every shiver of his fingers was poetry
Every tremble of his knees and thighs was poetry
Every desire for mother’s arms and women’s looks was poetry
All his anger, blame and Er! of him was poetry
All his silence was poetry
In one word Sherko was incarnation of poetry
(3)
But Sherko was human too.
A poetic human.
Man embedded in poetry
Poetry embodied in man
That is why you cannot talk about Sherko
You can only read him, if you can,
Here is
The drop
The water spring
The stream
The river
The sea
These are the ancient roots of history
The trunk of oaktree’s wound
This is the sweet Kurdish tongue
The most sacred gift of God
The first language of ideas and religion.
Copyright © 2013 Kurdistantribune.com
