Nazim Hikmet

On The Matter Of Romeo And Juliet by Nazim Hikmet

/ zdunno03 / 4 Comments

It’s no crime to be Romeo or Juliet;
it’s not a crime even to die for love.
What counts is whether you can be a Romeo or Juliet–
I mean, it’s all a question of your heart.

For instance, fighting at the barricades
or going off to explore the North Pole
or testing a new serum in your veins–
would it be a crime to die?

It’s no crime to be Romeo or Juliet;
it’s not a crime even to die for love.

You fall head over heels in love with the world,
but it doesn’t know you’re alive.
You don’t want to leave the world,
but it will leave you–
I mean, just because you love apples,
do apples have to love you back?
I mean, if Juliet stopped loving Romeo
–or if she’d never loved him–
would he be any less a Romeo?

It’s no crime to be Romeo or Juliet;
it’s not a crime even to die for love.

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

from Rubaiyat by Nazim Hikmet

/ zdunno03 / 2 Comments

4

I painted you on canvas only once
but picture you a thousand times a day.
Amazingly, your image there will last:
canvas has a longer life than I. . .

5

I can’t kiss or make love to your image,
but there in my city you’re flesh and blood,
and your red mouth, the honey I’m denied, your big eyes, really are,
and your surrender like rebel waters, your whiteness I can’t even touch. . .

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

from Things I Didn’t Know I Loved by Nazim Hikmet

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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 me
I like it

I didn’t know I liked rain
whether 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 train
is it because I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill me
is it because I’m half dead from thinking about someone back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue

the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew I liked the night pitch-black
sparks 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 out sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappear as if on a journey of no return

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

Because by Nazım Hikmet

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They’ll go to the moon
. . . . . . .and beyond,
to places even telescopes can’t see.
But when will no one go hungry
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .on earth
. . . . . . .or fear others
. . . . . . .or push them around,
. . . . . . .shun them
. . . . . . .or steal their hope?
Because I responded to this question
. . . . . . . . . .I’m called a Communist.

translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

from About Living by Nazım Hikmet: No. 1

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Living is not a joking matter:
you have to live with great seriousness
. . . . . . . .like a squirrel, for instance,
that is to say, without expecting anything outside or beyond living,
. . .which means, you must devote yourself fully to living.

You have to take living seriously,
in such a way, to such an extent
that, for instance, your hands tied behind you, your back to the wall,
or wearing think spectacles and a white robe,
in a laboratory,
you must be willing to die for other people,
even those whose faces you have never seen,
although nobody has forced you to do this
and although you know that living
. . .is the most beautiful and the most genuine thing.

That is to say, you have to take living so seriously
that, for instance, even at age seventy, you will plant olive trees
. . .and not to leave them to your children, either,
. . .but because you don’t believe in death although you fear it,
. . . . . .because, I mean, living carries greater weight.

translated by Talat S. Halman

This Journey by Nazim Hikmet

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We open doors,
close doors,
pass through doors,
and reach at the end of our only journey
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .no city,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .no harbor—
the train derails,
the ship sinks
the plane crashes.
The map is drawn on ice.
But if I could
. . . . .begin this journey all over again,
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .I would.

Translated by Randy Blasing & Mutlu Konuk

from Hymn to Life by Nazim Hikmet

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Tonight my hand
. . . . . . .can’t read or write.
It’s 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 seed
. . . . . . . . .splitting open underground.
Neither a song of the heart nor “common sense,”
neither loving nor unloving,
my hand on my wife’s flesh
. . . . . . . . .is 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 die
but to die to live. . .”

And now
as 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 off
. . . . . . . . .where we can’t see,
my hand on my wife’s flesh
before 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 & Mutlu Konuk

from Silence by Nazim Hikmet

/ zdunno03 / 3 Comments

Yet, inside we keep quiet,
the way a bullet keeps quiet in its cartridge.
If there is a echo in the dome of the sky
louder than our silence, let it cry out!

Outside,
In the dark,
the sea is bursting open like a forest struck in its groin.

Inside, we keep quiet,
and the dungeon is silent
. . .like a wounded animal
. . . .whose blood is trickling into its heart.

translated by Talat S. Halman