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Orpheus: The infinite!
7 October 1951,
was a cold, dark, deserted night
we were thirty people, a knife wouldn't part our lips
then we saw you from the wagon
languorously flowing
we all took out our cigarettes, lit up
and sang folk song.
--Ilhan Berk, Turkish Poet
 1 In a folk story, a sparrow starts a journey to ask this question from all the creatures”:’ who is the greatest?’ The mountain says grass, the grass says goat, the goat says wolf, and the wolf says the dog, the dog points to a shepherd, and the shepherd point to his flute. This story waits for a moment when the wolves come to the herd; the shepherd is alone and feels the wolves are coming. He uses his flute and plays, the voice reaches another shepherd and he plays too, little by little, the whole country is playing and all the shepherds gather to fight against wolves. In this story, flute has not appeared in its poetical function; also, the shepherd is not a poet. The voice of flute, in this story points to function of language. Flute sends a sign or a message to express something. This folktale says that language is the greatest. In addition, the story knows that flute in this function can only gather shepherds, because they all have the same profit. This story, by describing this role of language, shows the ways of forming duality between human and the world. 7 October 1951 was a dark, cold, and deserted night. No one could speak. The language became dumb in that absolute coldness. All the human acts were impossible. There was no possibility for interpretation to bring conceptual meaning into the episode. The weight of reality abandoned the power of language, the power that have made gap between human and the world in order to aggrandize itself. There was a real absence for meaning -not a conceptual meaning originated from interpretation-. Our world is an interpreted world, and "in this interpreted world, we do not feel securely at home.” . This world is not a safe and secure place for us all, and Rilke thinks that interpretation has created this danger. The main role of a poet is to bring this lost safety back into the world. The safety which is not the child of this or that conceptual interpretation, but it is the child of experiencing a mystery that suspends the interpretations and as Ryokan says, there you can see: "Enlightenment and Illusion are two side of a coin, universal and particular are the same, and the heart searches for a true companion". The safety of that night of Bashu, the poet, and the whores were touching life inside this un-ended haiku: "under the same roof/ the whores slept too/ the flowers and the moon."
2 Poets are wordless, because poetry is wordless; we must be able to live a long time in the coldness of the world, in an absolute simplicity just like Baba Taher Oryan, who his name means: The clear and naked father!
Once he was in a school and he asked of a holy man: “How could you reach to this grade of wisdom?” That man answered: “Once in cold, I broke up the ices of this lake and I stood a full night naked in it.” The man was kidding and suggesting an impossible way to him.
However, as tales say, Baba has done it. Naked, in the cold of the coldest winter, he broke up the ices of an impossible lake and sited naked in the lake, with an absolute simplicity came from a crazy belief. It is not a way that Philosophy can bear. It is a way of poets. Yes, it was a cold, dark, and deserted night. Thirty people in an absolute coldness, without a true companion, without meaning. It was just a cold night in a distinct moment of History. The poem says nothing about the existence of any intent or desire for companion. All the desires were silent in that impossible cold. There is a difference between poets and Sufis. In Sufism, they kill the actors in order to survive act. There, both lover and beloved should die in the act of loving, and the final unity is the unity of actors with act. Their way goes through killing the individuality. "Will" exists in the begging, the will of uniting. Actors must concentrate on unity in a distinct way of concentration. It is like jumping into a black hole. Sufism creates the story, and their individuality will transmute to the identity of the story, they will be dead characters and the story will narrate to an unuttered end. In 7 October 1951, thirty people were sitting in the unifying story of an absolute coldness. The poem destroys the Sufi way in order to suggest a poetical way.
3 History is a tale. “7 October 1951” does not exist. The infinite present is poetry. Even if we ask about death there, it rescues us in the instant we utter it. It is an experience. In fact, when we speak about it we betray it. All is present, nothing to do with memories. Moreover, poetry comes from unknown. It does not come, even from unconsciousness.
Memory is silent in 7 October 1951. Meaning and safety could not come from past. However, the infinite present offered it, from the wagon, languorously flowing. There is thirty people and one ‘you’, an unuttered ‘you’, languorously flowing. Moreover, you languorously suspended consciousness.
You as corporeality of poetry did not utter the mystery you lived. Uttering is translation. There is a living language for poetical experiences. The language that is the unknown semi-logic of mysteries, and poets can translate it to a text formally known as poetry. There is another self of us, inside a cosmos of mystery. That unutterable self catches us, we breathe another air, and we see objects as another observer. These observations, experiences, involvements, and concentrations originating from wonder change ourselves in the usual world.
4 The change broke the coldness. They lit up cigarettes, “facing with all the past of humanity, which is our primary language, in the background of an un-ended chorus,” the folksongs. Poetry defeated the History at 7 October 1951.
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