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Nazim Hikmet - Regarding Art
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Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah`s
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
           on strands of golden hair!

But my
poetry`s muse
takes to the air
on wings made of steel
like the I-beams
                of my suspension bridges!

I don`t pretend
               the nightingale`s lament
to the rose isn`t easy on the ears…
But the language
               that really speaks to me
are Beethoven sonatas played
on copper, iron, wood, bone, and catgut…

You can "have"
galloping off
in a cloud of dust!
Me, I wouldn`t trade
for the purest-bred
               Arabian steed
the sixth mph
               of my iron horse
                          running on iron tracks!

Sometimes my eye is caught like a big dumb fly
by the masterly spider webs in the corners of my room.
But I really look up
to the seventy-seven-story, reinforced-concrete mountains
                    my blue-shirted builders create!

Were I to meet
the male beauty
"young Adonis, god of Byblos,"
on a bridge, I`d probably never notice;
but I can`t help staring into my philosopher`s glassy eyes
or my fireman`s square face
                         red as a sweating sun!

Though I can smoke
third-class cigarettes filled
on my electric workbenches,
I can`t roll tobacco - even the finest-
in paper by hand and smoke it!
I didn`t —
         "wouldn`t" — trade
my wife dressed in her leather cap and jacket
for Eve`s nakedness!
Maybe I don`t have a "poetic soul"?
What can I do
     when I love my own children
                                more
                                than mother Nature`s!
                                
                                
Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)
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