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)
