Three sisters and brothers were we, just before the windows were broken
Brought up were we, in the houses with gardens without trees
An ill-omened winter was it. Maybe in December
In the dead of winter, if ever it disturbed mother

Never had we ever seen such a downpour piercing in the houses
A crimson love, a crimson sunset, growing up were we, slowly and silently

An overpouring despair was it, in fact, the make-believe prayer and the night

There is something that is clutched and never lets go
I am I and not am I that I
In such a way that the autumn
Is crashing into the evenings of mine madly

If I ever think a bit more
We were brothers and sisters, is what I can say. night was my dream
And, then, we departed from the town

That address was lost, as that flood was

Two corpses and a wounded body in his throat. all is over,
That was what the youngest of all was saying
The torn photographs of a house by the bank of the frozen lake
That is what I remember when I force my memory

Never had we ever met before, maybe not at all
Never had we ever been in a battlefield
Never had we known how the blood flowed, nor how the warm blood froze
All of a sudden, our hands over our mouths, as if signalling to keep silent

We never kept silent ever

Whenever a tree falls down
Whenever the time looks as if it is crimson

Three sisters and brothers were we. that was the fact. the carbon paper was torn apart
Did we have names that we were called by, or colours
Nothing at all. How should I know

Wake me up, oh life. Find a well deep inside me
Because three brothers and sisters were we. That is what I remember

Derya ÖNDER

(Translated into English by Aysu ERDEN)