This article was automatically translated from the original Turkish version.
Sometimes you cannot fully define what a poem is, but it touches you somewhere and spreads through your inner world like a quietude. For me, one such poem was Nurullah Genç’s “Ölüm Noktürnü.” Today I listened to it again, this time in Furkan Özdemir’s voice.
The moment I met you and faded away was death
When I looked at your face, death caught fire and burned
In a land of love that multiplies as it grows
You touched your hands to mine; death believed in you
From those enchanted, rainy, universal eyes
Death mistook the flying butterflies for happiness
A melody fell from your pale lips into my soul
As you walked along your paths, death seemed human
The day you turned to ruins my weary dreams
Death was tested by separation, sorrow, and love
For a lifetime, with bowed neck, it waited for reunion
I do not know why death was condemned for love’s sake
It crawled for years through dark corners
It writhed and resisted like me, death stood firm
Every evening in the storm, my sun was destroyed
Night was a faint dream, day a delusion—death
The heaviest decree in me was your absence
A drop of blood seeped from my lips—death
Death is loving you, in the hands of an executioner
I do not know in which heart death was such a sovereign
Today in this writing, I wish to discuss with you Nurullah Genç’s poem Ölüm Noktürnü. I have always appreciated Furkan Özdemir’s recitations of poetry, and I urge you to listen to this poem in his voice.
Nurullah Genç - Ölüm Noktürnü Şiiri (Furkan Özdemir)
The poet says: “The moment I met you and faded away was death.” There is a posture here, an acceptance. Death here is not an end, but the echo of a touch. To see a face, to be held by a glance—it feels as if one is sensing one’s own end. Perhaps loving truly resembles dying a little; because love takes something away from within a person. The more you love, the more you are diminished.
In Nurullah Genç’s poems there is always surrender, but this surrender is not defeat; it carries the inner peace of wisdom, as if saying there is no longer any need to resist. When he says, “Death is loving you, in the hands of an executioner,” he is conveying that love and death flow in the same direction. Both strip a person bare before life. There is no difference between burning with love and being consumed by death.
To me, Ölüm Noktürnü is a poem more about the weariness of love than about death. It is the silent confession of a heart that has loved deeply, waited long, and burned thoroughly. Even death becomes human in these lines; it weeps, waits, believes, and writhes—as if death itself has turned into a beloved. Each time I listen to this poem, I wonder within myself: “Is it possible to love someone so deeply and not be diminished?” Perhaps love is already diminishment, and perhaps death is, in truth, the ending of someone within you.
Ölüm Noktürnü is a poem that turns a person inward; it grows in silence and gains meaning as it deepens. Sometimes a person does not think of death, but of silence. The final word left unspoken, the unsaid “don’t go,” the half-finished “stay.” Each time one reads this poem, one dies a little and is reborn a little. Because in Nurullah Genç’s lines, even death embraces life.