Market

She gave up the grocer and butcher
she slipped past the greengrocer
she took up with the market
and wire basket in hand
she looks at the mushrooms the meats
at the foreign cheeses
with two packets of bulgur
a pound of minced meat
she undulates home
to her house down the street
thinking how good
how good to be alive
how good the world!

Translated by Ruth Christie

For half a century Oktay Rifat occupied a leading position in the vanguard of Turkish poetry. Despite his popularity and fame he rarely appeared in public, preferring the private life of an ordinary family man and content to work as an attorney while continuing to write. This generous selection exemplifies Rifat’s insistence that ‘poetry must be read and must be readable.’ It draws on all phases of his work, from the early iconoclasm and later neo-surrealism to the mature period in which innovation blends with folk traditions, creating poetry rich in feeling and thought.