My Glorious Flag

The first light I encountered when I opened my eyes to this world is you, my glorious flag, the one I will embrace at the end of my life. Şanlı bayrağım I recognized you as the most precious existence this fleeting world can offer—a being visible to a mortal’s eyes and inscribable upon the heart.

^Bayrağım (Anadolu Ajansı)

I named that noble crimson, shining like a jewel in the infinite blue of the sky,

not merely a piece of cloth,

but the name of my thousand-year love, the most sacred trust within my soul.

Every time I look at you, I hear the tears a mother sheds before her prayer mat and her silent prayer. I regarded loving you as the noblest and most honorable right I could claim as a human being. I became bound to your unmatched beauty, surrendering without hesitation my life’s most springlike years for your sake. When I grew weary, I gazed at you, and wiped away my tears with your fabric.

O you who bring peace to every particle of my soul! When you playfully sway, I fall deeper into an eternal love. Each day, I breathe with profound peace, knowing that even in life’s loneliest corner or the freezing cold atop a mountain, your dignified presence will embrace my weary spirit.

As you flutter, I know I am alive; as long as your shadow never leaves me, I feel safe. You are both my beginning and the final resting place of my life.

O tender crescent, for whom there is nothing too precious to forsake!

My crown,

My tender beloved, deepest in my heart!

You are my covenant with God.^【1】