I
Life's no joke,
you must live it in earnest
like a squirrel, for example,
expecting nothing outside of your life or beyond,
you must concentrate wholly on living.
You must take living seriously,
so much so that,
your back to the wall, your arms bound behind;
or in a laboratory
in your white coat and big goggles
you can die for mankind,
even for people whose faces you've never seen,
even though nobody forces you,
even though you know the best thing, the most real,
is to live.
You'll take living so seriously,
that even at seventy you'll plant olive trees
not just to leave to your children;
but because, although you fear death
you don't believe in it,
so great is the power of life.
1947
II
Say we're ill enough for a major operation,
I mean that perhaps we won't ever get up
from the white table.
If we have to feel sorry for leaving a little early,
we can still laugh at Nasreddin Hodja jokes,
and look from the window to see if it rains,
or hang around restless
for the latest news.
Say we're fighting for something worthwhile,
at the front, for example;
at the first assault the first day,
we might fall face down and die.
We'll feel a strange anger,
and not knowing
the end of that war which could last for years
will still drive us mad.
Say we're in prison,
our age almost fifty,
eighteen years till they open the iron door;
but we must still live with the world outside,
with its people and animals, its quarrels, its wind,
the world beyond the wall.
But wherever, however we are,
we must live as though
we will never die.
1948
III
This world will grow cold,
a star among the stars,
one of the smallest,
this great world of ours
a gilded mote on blue velvet.
This world will grow cold one day,
not even as a heap of ice,
or a lifeless cloud,
it will roll like an empty walnut round and round
in pitch darkness for ever.
For now you must feel this pain,
and endure the sadness,
but so love this world
that you can say,
'I have lived'.
February 1948
[Letter to Kemal Tahir from prison]
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