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Nazim Hikmet - On Living
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I

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 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.

                          
                          II

Let`s say you`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.


                        III

This earth will grow cold,
a star 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"…


Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)
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