I Will Find My Darling in the New Year at the Bottom of a Rose Branch

Nurduran, a good friend, who posted here several poets, wrote a short story for the New Year:

I Will Find My Darling in the New Year at the Bottom of a Rose Branch

“I let every opportunity slip away, even death.”

This was one of the immortal theatre heroes Cyrano De Bergerac’s closing remarks before he died... He couldn’t accept the fact that such a poet, a musketeer, a music lover, a man who knew physics, a man who was kind as himself and also a hero would die with a beat to the head with wood, as no one else including myself could. (Except for the writer Edmond Rostand).

As the question of whether Cyrano made the remark stated above to the musketeer or if it was the other way around flows through my head eager to find a bed to surface; first of all I intend to wish that nobody shares Cyrano’s fate in 2008. And that they welcome 2009 with a year end that is full of unused opportunities.

Contrary to those who say that welcoming the New Year is nothing but hanging a new calendar on the wall and having to buy a new diary, I think that being in every celebration that witnesses various aspects of our lives is an opportunity. The current formulas of physics may not suffice to decide whether time cares if it is given a name or not but what harm is there in evaluating what has developed in the name of the human race, what has deteriorated, what has made people happy, what has humiliated them in the past year we gave a number a year ago? What can we loose by naming the coming year, New Year in order to conduce toward a new beginning, actually wishing to witness better times for ourselves, our country and our planet?

As long as we aren’t beside ourselves with consuming, aren’t the new year celebrations just another opportunity to express Love, confess love, thank everyone in our lives for being there, wishing them the best, honoring time that witnesses our every moment and most importantly for the whole world to have fun and enliven the universe with hope and best wishes all at the same time? Since we cannot all cry at once... Since we cannot all cry, and stand by watching the absurdity of those who set out to be kings of the world...

One should target the uniting, the peacemaking, the love contaminating and developmental side of everything and celebrate everything worth celebrating with latitude... Because, just as you can’t separate a melody from another, you can’t keep a person away from another. As one finds their darling at the bottom of a rose branch with a folk song from the city of Kütahya which they have never heard before; one other may embrace a totally different person and sing the “Salonika folk song” looking STRAIGHT into their eyes.

2008 will be composed of days that latitude is crowned and makes a pine needle blossom; days in which the fact that blood is thicker than water is comprehended once and for all; days in which we can stand against those who pass for wise men, side by side without the notion of “superior-inferior” clouding our judgment, brighter, wiser, and more sightful days in which we won’t let good deeds turn bad; It will be blessed.

Surely it will be blessed, did I write that many poems I attached to blue beaded brooms and made into fortunes to be drawn in vain?

“May getting rid of the past sorrows
beating them off
come easy as playing a game,
Let no evil eye affect
your love
your lover
in the new year(s)”

With the wish that the lives that are tangent to each other fully touch, and the ones that don’t, do.
And that those who are far away come back into our lives, and to feel the closeness of those who are near.

Yours,

Nurduran Duman