# Orhan Veli Kanık's best-loved poems and lines

"I am listening to Istanbul, my eyes closed", "I Can't Tell" and Süleyman Efendi's corns: the lines everyone in Turkey knows by heart by Orhan Veli Kanık (1914–1950), founder of the Garip movement who rejected metre and rhyme, with the title of each poem.

- 41 votes · 13 items
- Jan 11, 2023 · inkandpaper_antalya
- https://even.best/en/l/5245/orhan-veli-kan%C4%B1k-s-best-loved-poems-and-lines

## Top 13

1. **I never knew songs were so beautiful / and words so inadequate / before I fell into this sorrow.** (5 · ▲5 ▼0) — From the poem "I Can't Tell".
2. **I am listening to Istanbul, my eyes closed.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — From the poem "I Am Listening to Istanbul".
3. **If I wept, would you hear my voice / in my lines?** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — From the poem "I Can't Tell".
4. **Before sunrise, / while the sea is still white, you will set out.** (4 · ▲4 ▼0) — From the poem "Towards Freedom".
5. **There is a place, I know, / where everything can be said; / I have come quite close, I can hear it; / I can't tell.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — From the poem "I Can't Tell".
6. **He suffered from nothing in this world / as much as from his corns.** (3 · ▲3 ▼0) — From the poem "Epitaph".
7. **This fine weather has been the ruin of me.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — From the poem "Fine Weather".
8. **I stand staring after the departing ship; / I cannot throw myself into the sea, the world is beautiful; / I am a man, I cannot cry.** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — From the poem "Departure".
9. **You say: if only this fight would end, / if only I weren't hungry… / Why not just say: if only I died!** (2 · ▲2 ▼0) — From the poem "Comfort".
10. **Is this sea so beautiful every day? / Does the sky always look like this? / … / Something's up here.** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — From the poem "Something's Up".
11. **Neither the atom bomb / nor the London Conference; / tweezers in one hand, / a mirror in the other: / does she care about the world!** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — From the poem "Poem with Tweezers".
12. **What makes a poem a poem is only the particularity of its tone, and that belongs to meaning.** (1 · ▲2 ▼1) — From his writings on poetry.
13. **What have we not done for this homeland! / Some of us died; / some of us made speeches.** (-3 · ▲0 ▼3) — From the poem "For the Homeland".

How is this ranking ordered? By people's votes: each ▲ adds a point and each ▼ takes one away. Anyone can vote and add what is missing.