From Nazım Hikmet Ran

LETTER FROM MY WIFE

Iwant to die before you.Do you think the one who followsfinds the one who went first?I don't think so.It would be best to have me burnedand put in a jarover your fireplace. Make the jar clear glass,so you can watch me inside...You see my sacrifice :I give up being earth,I give up being a flowerjust to stay near you.And I become dustto live with you.Then, when you die, you can come into my jarand we'll live there together,your ashes in mine,until some dizzy brideor wayward grandsontosses us out...But by thenwe'll beso mixedtogetherthat even at the dump our atomswill fall side by side.We'll dive into the earth together.And if one day a wild flowerfinds water and springs up from that piece of earth,its stem will havetwo blossoms for sure :one will be you,the other me.
I'mnot about to die yet.I want to bear another child.I'm brimming with life.My blood is hot.I'm going to live a long, long time -and with you.Death doesn't scare me,I just don't find our funeral arrangementstoo attractive.But everything could changebefore I die.Any chance you'll get out of prison soon?Something inside me says :Maybe

THE WALNUT TREE

my head foaming clouds,
sea inside me and out
I am a walnut tree in Gulhane Parkan old walnut,
knot by knot,
shred by shred
Neither you are aware of this, nor the police
I am a walnut tree in Gulhane Park
My leaves are nimble, nimble like fish in water
My leaves are sheer, sheer like a silk handkerchiefpick, wipe, my rose, the tear from your eyes
My leaves are my hands,
I have one hundred thousand
I touch you with one hundred thousand hands,
I touch Istanbul
My leaves are my eyes,
I look in amazement
I watch you with one hundred thousand eyes,
I watch Istanbul
Like one hundred thousand hearts, beat, beat my leaves
I am a walnut tree in Gulhane Park
neither you are aware of this, nor the police



TODAY IS SUNDAY

Today is Sunday.

For the first time they took me out into the sun today.

And for the first time in my life I was aghastthat the sky is so far awayand so blue and so vast

I stood there without a motion.

Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion leaning against the white wall.

Who cares about the waves with which I yearn to rollOr about strife or freedom or my wife right now

.The soil, the sun and me...I feel joyful and how.

ON LIVING

ILiving is no laughing matter:

you must live with great seriousnesslike a squirrel,

for example-I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,

I mean living must be your whole occupation.

Living is no laughing matter:

you must take it seriously,so much so and to such a degreethat, for

example, your hands tied behind your back,your back to the wall,or

else in a laboratoryin your white coat and safety glasses,you can die

for people-even for people whose faces you've never seen,even

though you know livingis the most real, the most beautiful thing.

I mean, you must take living so seriouslythat even at seventy, for

example, you'll plant olive trees-and not for your children,

either,but

because although you fear death you don't believe it,because living,

I mean, weighs heavier.


II

Let's say you're seriously ill, need surgery -which is to say

we might not getfrom the white table.

Even though it's impossible not to feel sadabout going a little too soon,

we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,

we'll look out the window to see it's raining,or still wait anxiouslyfor the latest newscast ...

Let's say we're at the front-for something worth fighting for, say.

There, in the first offensive, on that very day,we might fall on our face, dead.We'll know this with a curious anger,

but we'll still worry ourselves to deathabout the outcome of the war,

which could last years.

Let's say we're in prisonand close to fifty,

and we have eighteen more years, say,

before the iron doors will open.

We'll still live with the outside,with its people and animals, struggle and wind-

I mean with the outside beyond the walls.

I mean, however and wherever we are,

we must live as if we will never die.


III

This earth will grow cold,a star among starsand one of the smallest,a gilded mote on blue velvet-

I mean this, our great earth.

This earth will grow cold one day,not like a block of iceor a dead cloud evenbut like an empty walnut

it will roll alongin pitch-black space ...

You must grieve for this right now-

you have to feel this sorrow now-for the world must be loved this

muchif you're going to say

``I lived'' ...


Nazim Hikmet, February, 1948Translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk - 1993


THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW I LOVED

it's 1962 March 28th

I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train

night is falling

I never knew I likednight descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain

I don't likecomparing nightfall to a tired bird
I didn't know I loved the earthcan someone who hasn't worked the earth love it

I've never worked the earthit must be my only Platonic love
and here I've loved rivers all this time whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills

European hills crowned with chateausor whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see

I know you can't wash in the same river even once

I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see

I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow

I know this has troubled people beforeand will trouble those after me

I know all this has been said a thousand times before and will be said

after me


I didn't know I loved the sky cloudy or clearthe blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodinoin prison

I translated both volumes of War and Peace into Turkish

I hear voicesnot from the blue vault but from the yard the guards are beating someone again

I didn't know I loved treesbare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkinothey come upon me in winter noble and modest beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish "the poplars of Izmirlosing their leaves. . .

they call me The Knife. . .lover like a young tree. . .

I blow stately mansions sky-high"in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an

embroidered linen handkerchief to a pine bough for luck


I never knew I loved roads even the asphalt kindVera's behind the wheel

we're driving from Moscow to the Crimea Koktebeleformerly

"Goktepé ili" in Turkish the two of us inside a closed boxthe world flows past on both sides distant and mute

I was never so close to anyone in my lifebandits stopped me on the

red road between Bolu and Geredé

when I was eighteenapart from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon

they could take and at eighteen our lives are what we value least

I've written this somewhere beforewading through a dark muddy street

I'm going to the shadow play Ramazan nighta paper lantern leading the way

maybe nothing like this ever happened

maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boygoing to the shadow

playRamazan night in Istanbul holding his grandfather's hand his

grandfather has on a fez and is wearing the fur coatwith a sable

collar over his robeand there's a lantern in the servant's hand

and I can't contain myself for joyflowers come to mind for some

reason poppies cactuses jonquilsin the jonquil garden in Kadikoy

Istanbul

I kissed Marika fresh almonds on her breath

I was seventeenmy heart on a swing touched the sky

I didn't know I loved flowersfriends sent me three red carnations in

prison
I just remembered the stars I love them toowhether

I'm floored watching them from below or whether I'm flying at their

side


I have some questions for the cosmonauts were the stars much

bigger did they look like huge jewels on black velvetor apricots on

orange

did you feel proud to get closer to the starsI saw color photos of the

cosmos in Ogonek magazine

now don't be upset comrades but nonfigurative shall we say or

abstract

well some of them looked just like such paintings which is to say

they were terribly figurative and concretemy heart was in my mouth

looking at them

they are our endless desire to grasp thingsseeing them

I could even think of death and not feel at all sad

I never knew I loved the cosmos


snow flashes in front of my eyesboth heavy wet steady snow and the

dry whirling kind

I didn't know I liked snow


I never knew I loved the suneven when setting cherry-red as nowin

Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors but you aren't about

to paint it that way

I didn't know I loved the sea except the Sea of Azovor how much


I didn't know I loved clouds whether I'm under or up above them

whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts


moonlight the falsest the most languid the most petit-bourgeois

strikes meI like it


I didn't know I liked rainwhether it falls like a fine net or splatters

against the glass my heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped

inside a drop and takes off for uncharted countries

I didn't know I loved rain but why did I suddenly discover all these

passions sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin trainis

it because I lit my sixth cigarette one alone could kill meis it

because I'm half dead from thinking about someone back in

Moscowher hair straw-blond eyelashes blue


the train plunges on through the pitch-black night

I never knew I liked the night pitch-blacksparks fly from the engine

I didn't know I loved sparks

I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait until sixty to

find it out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return


19 April 1962, MoscowTranslated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)


HYMN TO LIFE

The hair falling on your foreheadsuddenly lifted.

Suddenly something stirred on the ground.

The trees are whisperingin the dark.

Your bare arms will be cold.
Far offwhere we can't see,the moon must be rising.

It hasn't reached us yet,slipping through the leavesto light up your

shoulder.

But I knowa wind comes up with the moon.

The trees are whispering.

Your bare arms will be cold.


From above,from the branches lost in the dark,something dropped at

your feet.

You moved closer to me.

Under my hand your bare flesh is like the fuzzy skin of a fruit.

Neither a song of the heart nor "common sense"--before the trees,

birds, and insects,my hand on my wife's fleshis thinking.

Tonight my handcan't read or write.

Neither loving nor unloving...

It's the tongue of a leopard at a spring,a grape leaf,a wolf's paw.

To move, breathe, eat, drink.

My hand is like a seedsplitting open underground.

Neither a song of the heart nor "common sense,"neither loving nor

unloving.

My hand thinking on my wife's fleshis the hand of the first man.

Like a root that finds water underground,

it says to me:"To eat, drink, cold, hot, struggle, smell, color--not to

live in order to diebut to die to live..."


And nowas red female hair blows across my face,

as something stirs on the ground,as the trees whisper in the dark,and

as the moon rises far offwhere we can't see,my hand on my wife's

fleshbefore the trees, birds, and insects,

I want the right of life,of the leopard at the spring, of the seed

splitting open--I want the right of the first man.


Translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)