Fave Poems 2: Nazim Hikmet - Advice for Someone Going into Prison

If instead of getting the rope
          you're thrown inside
          for not cutting off hope
          from your world, your country, your people;
          if you do a ten or fifteen year stretch,
          or more than the time you have left
don't say:
          'Better to have swung at the end of a rope like a flag.'
You must insist on living.

There may not be happiness
but it is your binding duty
                    to resist the enemy,
                    and live one extra day.

Inside, one part of you may live completely alone
                    like a stone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part of you
          must so involve yourself
          in the whirl of the world,
          that inside you will shudder
when outside a leaf trembles on the ground forty days away.

Waiting for a letter inside,
singing melancholic songs,
staying awake all night, eyes glued to the ceiling,
          is sweet but dangerous.

Look at your face from shave to shave,
forget how old you are,
protect yourself from lice, and from spring evenings,
          and eat your bread to the very last crumb
and don't ever forget the freedom of laughter.

Who knows,
if the woman you love no longer loves you,
it's no small thing,
it's like the breaking of a fresh green twig
                              to the man inside.

Inside it's bad to think of roses and gardens.
It's good to think of mountains and oceans.
Never stop reading and writing,
and I recommend you weaving
and silvering mirrors.

What I'm saying is that inside, ten years or fifteen years
                    or even more can be got through,
they really can:
          enough that you never let the precious stone
          under your left breast grow dull.


May 1949