Lili Marleen
Suddenly İstanbul Municipal Radio
starts playing Lili Marleen.
Tears in my eyes.
I flunked the entrance exam of the German High school;
Leyla, my steady girlfriend since the first grade,
my eternal love, got in.
Our roads, I know, will separate.
What a beautiful language, says my mother
making my melancholy worse.
Don’t let the girls see you crying,
advises my younger older-brother,
they’ll never go out with you again.
This was the song of the Nazi brutes,
declares my older older-brother authoritatively
as if this historical fact would repair my broken heart
