Fave Poems 5: Nazim Hikmet - Letters from a Man in Solitary

          1

I scratched your name
with my nail, on the strap of my wrist-watch.
Where I am, you know,
there's no such thing as a mother-of-pearl penknife,
('sharps' are forbidden)
          or a plane tree, its head in the clouds.
Perhaps there's a tree in the yard, but
          I'm forbidden
to see the sky over my head...
How many are housed here apart from me?
I don't know.
I'm alone, far from them,
and they're all far from me.
          I'm forbidden
to speak to anyone but myself.
But I do talk to myself.
And as I find my conversation very boring
          I sing, dear wife.
What! you'll say,
that voice of mine is rough and out of tune
          but it touched me so deeply
                    it breaks my heart.
This heart, like a barefoot orphan in those old sad stories,
          struggling through the snow,
his blue eyes wet,
his little red nose sniffling,
          wants to bury himself in your bosom.
It doesn't make me blush,
          this moment:
               it's so frail,
                    so needy,
                         and simply,
                              so human.
Perhaps the explanation lies
in psychology, physiology, etc...
Perhaps the reason is -
          for months
          I've been prevented from hearing any other voice
          by this barred window,
                    this earthenware water-jug,
                              these four walls...

Five o'clock, my dear one.
Outside with its thirst,
          strange whispers,
          its mud-baked roofs,
          with a crippled and skinny horse
standing motionless in the midst of infinity;
outside, driving the man inside crazy from grief,
a scarlet evening with all its bag and baggage, all its craft,
descend on the steppe, on a treeless void.

Tonight will come suddenly.
Light will play about the crippled skinny horse.
Now in a moment stars will fill the treeless void
          of this no-hope nature
that lies like a rough male corpse before me.
Again we've reached the familiar end of the business.
Today too everything's in place, everything's ready
for a great nostalgia.
I,
the man inside
will show my modest skill again
with the thin piping voice of my childhood,
with an old simple song on my lips,
by God! which will still defeat my grieving heart;
I'll hear you in my head,
like watching you in a dim distorted mirror,
                    so far away...


          2

Outside, my love, the spring has come, the spring.
Outside, suddenly over the steppe
the fresh earth-smell, birdsong and all -
Outside, my love, the spring has come, the spring,
Outside, gleams of light on the steppe...
And now inside, the mattress alive with insects,
          the jug that doesn't turn water to ice,
and in the mornings sun on the cement...
The sun,
now every day till noon,
near me or far,
fading or radiant
          moves...
Day turns to afternoon, shadows fall on the walls,
the glass on the barred window begins to catch fire;
          outside it's evening,
          a cloudless spring evening...
Here inside, is spring's worst hour.
In short
the demon called freedom
with his glittering, scaly skin, his fiery eyes,
forces the man inside to submit, especially in spring...
This experience is always the same, my love,
                    always the same...


          3

Today is Sunday.
Today for the first time they brought me into the sun.
And for the first time in my life
I stood motionless in wonder;
          how far away the sky,
          how blue,
          how vast.
Then humbly I sat on the earth,
I leaned my back on the wall.
At this moment no daydreams,
at this moment no struggle, no freedom, no wife.
The earth, the sun and I...
I am happy.