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.

Fave Poems 4: Nazim Hikmet

One of the "Poems written between 9 and 10 at night" for his wife Piraye

4th December  1945

Take out from the chest the dress you wore
the first time we saw each other.
Put it on, be like the trees in spring.
The carnation I sent you in a letter from prison:
put it in your hair.
Lift your high, white forehead
with its kissable lines.
On such a day you shouldn't be down and depressed,
it's not right.
On such a day, Nazim Hikmet's wife should be beautiful
as a rebel flag.

Fave Poems 3: Nazim Hikmet - Letter to My Wife

                                 11-11-1933
                                 Bursa Prison

My one and only!
Your last letter says:
"My head is throbbing,
               my heart is stunned!"
You say:
"If they hang you,
           if I lose you,
                     I'll die!"

You'll live, my dear--
my memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind.
Of course you'll live, red-haired lady of my heart:
in the twentieth century
                    grief lasts
                         at most a year.
Death--
a body swinging from a rope.
My heart
         can't accept such a death.
But
you can bet
     if some poor gypsy's hairy black
               spidery hand
                  slips a noose
                      around my neck,
they'll look in vain for fear
                      in Nazim's
                          blue eyes!

In the twilight of my last morning
I
will see my friends and you,
and I'll go
to my grave
            regretting nothing but an unfinished song...

My wife!
Good-hearted,
golden,
eyes sweeter than honey--my bee!
Why did I write you
                   they want to hang me?
The trial has hardly begun,
and they don't just pluck a man's head
                             like a turnip.
Look, forget all this.
If you have any money,
               buy me some flannel underwear:
my sciatica is acting up again.
And don't forget,
a prisoner's wife
               must always think good thoughts.


Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)

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

Fave Poems 1: Nazim Hikmet - On Living

     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]