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By Vanasalus
#14800183
Well, I am bound to start this with one of my all time favorite poems. Hope You enjoy.


On Living

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like 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 degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people--
even for people whose faces you've never seen,
even though nobody forced you to do this
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

I mean, you must take living so seriously
that 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.

Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery--
which is to say we might not get
from the white table.
Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
about 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 anxiously
for 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 death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.

Let's say we're in prison
and 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.

This earth will grow cold,
a planet among stars
and 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 ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space ...

You must grieve for this right now
--you have to feel this sorrow now--
for the world must be loved this much
if you're going to say "I lived" ...


Nazim Hikmet - 1947/1948
User avatar
By Vanasalus
#14806409
SINCE I WAS THROWN INSIDE

Since I was thrown inside
the earth has gone around the sun ten times.
If you ask it : "Not worth mentioning
a microscopic scan."
If you ask me : "Ten years of my life."

I had a pencil
the year I was thrown inside.
I used it up after a week of writing. If you ask it :
"A whole lifetime."
If you ask me :
"What´s a week."

Since I´ve been inside
Osman did his seven-and-a-half
for manslaughter and left,
knocked around on the outside for a while,
then landed back inside for smuggling,
served six months, and got out again;
yesterday we had a letter - he´s married,
with a kid coming in the spring.

They are ten years old now
the children who were born
the year I was thrown inside.
And that year´s foals, shaky on their spindly long legs,
have been wide-rumped, contented mares for some time.

But the olive seedlings are still saplings,
still children.

New squares have opened in my far off city
since I was thrown inside.
And my family now lives
in a house I haven´t seen
on a street I don´t know.

Bread was like cotton, soft and white,
the year I was thrown inside. Then it was rationed,
and here inside men killed each other
over black loaves the size of fists.
Now it´s free again
but dark and tasteless.

The year I was thrown inside
the SECOND hadn´t started yet.
The ovens at Dachau hadn´t been lit,
nor the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Time flowed like blood from a child´s slit throat.
Then that chapter was officially closed.
Now the American capitalism talks of a THIRD.

Still, the day has gotten lighter
since I was thrown inside.
And "At the edge of darkness,
pushing against the earth with their heavy hands,
THEY´ve risen up" halfway.

Since I was thrown inside
the earth has gone around the sun ten times.

And I repeat once more with the same passion
what I wrote about THEM
the year I was thrown inside :
"THEY who are numberless
like ants in the earth,
fish in the sea,
birds in the air,
who are cowardly, brave,
ignorant, wise,
and childlike,
and who destroy
and create,
my songs tell only of their adventures."

And anything else,
such as my ten years here,
is just so much talk.


Nazim Hikmet - 1947
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