A crescent moon, a single star
Against a deep blue vastness
Shine like a knife edge

Grass wavers in the headlights
Hands muse in the wind

Rocks crunch beneath the tires
Resound in a thunderous clamor

Twenty years ago
A group of young men like this
Rode into the mountains on horseback
Some carrying flags newly-sewn
Some carrying guns

They once sang the selfsame songs
Some tender, some ardent

Their tents flap fiercely in the wind
Their sheep and cattle graze in the shadow of the power plant

How pretty that dammed lake is
Having rewritten the face of the land forever

Are there any old songs
That aren’t fretted with new sorrows?

Are there any new songs
Whose every note
Is not resonant with the same old yearning for home?



* The Kurds are the most widely distributed ethnic group without their own country in the world. With a population of 25,000,000, more than all Taiwan, the Kurdish people are spread across parts of Turkey, Iran, Iraq and other countries in the region, where they have long struggled for linguistic, cultural, and political autonomy, and have long suffered the imprisonment and slaughter that the governments of these countries have inflicted on them. The left wing guerrillas mentioned here have been oppressed since 1980’s.

* The national flag of Turkey displays a crescent and a star against a red field.