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Nazim Hikmet - Poems For Piraye (9 To 10 O’Clock Poems)Nazim Hikmet - Poems For Piraye (9 To 10 O’Clock Poems)
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Remembering you is good in prison amid the news of victory and death as my fortieth year passes... Remembering you is good your hand forgotten upon a blue dress your hair with the grave softness of the earth of my beloved Istanbul. This joy of loving you is like a second person inside me... The smell of geranium leaves on your fingertips warm and comforting The invitation of your flesh a hot intense darkness scored by vivid red lines... Remembering you is good or writing about you as I lie on my back in prison thinking of such and such a day at such and such a place of some words you said not of the words so much but of the world and you within them... Remembering you is good I must carve some things for you again a jewel box a ring I must weave a length of thin silk then jump up and clutching the window bars shout what I have written for you to the innocent blue of freedom. Remembering you is good in prison amid the news of victory and death as my fortieth year passes... 1942 At this late hour on this autumn night I am filled with your words. Eternal like time like matter Naked like an eye Heavy like a hand Words which sparkle like stars. Your words came to me from your heart your head your body Your words delivered you mother woman comrade Your words were sad they were bitter hopeful heroic Your words were human. September 20, 1945 Our son is sick his father in prison your heavy head fallen in your tired palms the laughter drained from your golden eyes. People will surely carry people on to sunnier days our son will get well his father out of prison your golden eyes will fill with laughter once more... Our fate is the world`s fate. September 21, 1945 Reading books you`re there inside me Hearing songs you`re inside me Eating my bread you`re sitting before me Or at my work you`re before me. You`re my "silent partner" everywhere. Although we cannot speak Although we cannot hear each other`s voices. You`re my widow of eight years. September 22, 1945 What is she doing now this second, this very second? Is she at home, outside, working, lying down, on her feet? could she be raising her arm? O my love! how this movement bares her strong white wrist! What is she doing now this second, this very second? Perhaps she has a kitten on her lap, she`s petting it. Or, perhaps she`s walking, about to step. O those feet I cherish, those feet which bring her to me on tip-toe when days are dark... And what is she thinking about, of me? Or, who knows, why the beans take so long to cook? Or, even, why the majority of men are so miserable? What is she thinking now this second, this very second? September 23, 1945 The loveliest sea is the sea not yet traveled The loveliest child is the child not yet born Our loveliest days are those we have not yet lived through. And the loveliest word I would say to you is the word that I have not yet said. September 24, 1945 Squatting, I look at the earth I look at the grasses I look at the insects I look at the deep blue flowers opening from stems. I look at you, my love, You are like the spring earth. Stretched out on my back, I see the sky I see the tree`s branches I see the storks flying I see you, my love, You are like the spring sky. Lighting a night fire, I touch the fire I touch the water I touch the cloth I touch the silver I touch you, my love You are the fire lit beneath the stars. Inside of people, I love people I love action I love thinking I love my struggle I love you, my love, You are a person inside my struggle. 1945 9 PM horns blare in the yard soon they will close the cell doors. This prison term is longer than the others nearly eight years now... Living is a labor of hope, my love, living is a serious business like loving you... September 25, 1945 They enslaved us threw us in prison me inside the walls you outside the walls. But that is nothing, the true evil is that knowingly or unknowingly a man carries the prison inside himself... Most of the men fallen to this state are honorable hard-working good men, and deserve to be loved as I love you. September 26, 1945 Thinking of you is a beautiful thing a hopeful thing a thing like hearing the most beautiful song from the world`s most beautiful voice... But hope no longer is enough for me I no longer want to hear the song— I want to sing it... September 30, 1945 Above the mountain there is a cloud swollen with sun above the mountain. Another day passed without you with and without the world another day. They will open soon in bursts of red nightflowers will open in bursts of red. Soundless bold wings carry our separation that separation like an exile from the homeland... October 1, 1945 The wind flows by no cherry branch moves with the same wind twice. Birds chatter in the trees: wings poised for flight. A closed door: waiting to be thrown open. I want you I want life to be as lovely and friendly and good as you. I know this feast of misery is not yet finished. But it will be finished... October 2, 1945 Both of us know, my love, they taught us the hunger, the shivering, the withering exhaustion, the separation from each other. Still, we have not been forced to kill nor tasted the moment of being killed. Both of us know, my love, we can teach them to fight for our people to love each day a little stronger a little more from our souls... October 5, 1945 Clouds pass, heavy and swollen with news, Crushing in my fist the letter that hasn`t come yet, Tears in the corners of my eyes, goodbyes said to the endless earth, And I want to shout: Piraye! Pi-ra-ye! October 6, 1945 At night, the wind carries the cries of men across the open seas At night, there is danger still in straying across the open seas. This field, unplowed for six years, still bears the tracks of tank treads This winter, the snow will cover these untouched tracks of tank treads. Ah, my dearest, the antennas are lying again so that the merchants of sweat can close with 100% profits. But those who have returned from Azrail`s feast have returned with their decisions made... October 7, 1945 I`ve become unbearable again sleepless, petty, cross. You can see I`m working one day like a blasphemous shrew like a raging animal. And then I`m on my back the next day from morning to evening a lazy folksong in my mouth like a cigarette that has gone out. The hate and the pity I feel for myself hold me totally in their grasp. I`ve become unbearable again sleepless, petty, cross. As always, I`m unfair. Without any reason or any possibility of one, and even though it`s a vile humiliation I can`t help it, I`m jealous. Forgive me... October 8, 1945 Last night I had a dream: You were sitting at my feet, You raised your head, turned Your enormous golden eyes to me, And asked a question, Your wet lips opened and closed, But I didn`t hear your voice. The hour struck as though somewhere There was good news in the night. Whispers of endlessness in the air, My canary in its red cage Singing the Song of Memo. The small cracking sounds of seeds Pushing and lifting the earth, And the just and triumphant humming Of some gathering comes to my ear. Your wet lips still opened and closed, But I didn`t hear your voice. I awoke in a nervous uncertainty. I had fallen asleep over my book, it seems, But I am wondering now Whether all those voices were not your voice? October 9, 1945 Looking in your eyes I am drunk with the smell of warm earth lost in a wheat field among the stalks... Your eyes are like an eternal substance, changing endlessly pits without bottom, with flashes of green... whose secret is given up a little each day but never completely surrendered. October 10, 1945 When I leave the prison to meet my death And when we turn for the last time to look at the city, We shall be able to say these words, my love: "Though you never made our hearts rejoice, we worked hard as we could thinking we could make you happy. Roads to happiness lead on, as life goes on. We are content, our hearts are satisfied with the bread we earned; Our eyes bear the afflictions of separation from your light. See, we have come and now we are going. May you be happy, city of Aleppo..." October 18, 1945 We are one half of an apple the other half is this enormous world We are one half of an apple the other half is our people You are one half of an apple I am the other half we are two... October 27, 1945 The smell rises from the geraniums The waves hum on the seas Autumn is here with its full clouds And intelligent earth... My love, the year has reached its maturity. It seems that we have known Perhaps a thousand years` worth of life, But we are still wide-eyed children Running hand in hand in the sun... October 28, 1945 Forget the flowering almond trees. Why think of that which cannot be regained? Dry your wet hair in the sun, Your hair with the smell of ripe fruit, That shines, heavy and damp, with redness. My love, my love, the season is autumn... November 5, 1945 From above the roofs of my distant city, passing the tip of the Marmara sea, flying over the autumn earth Came your voice— moist and mature— For three minutes. Then, the telephone was closed down like pitch darkness... November 8, 1945 The last southwinds have begun to blow warm and humming like blood pouring from a vein. I listen to the weather: it`s pulse is slowing down. There is snow on Olympia`s peak. On the Kirezli plateau the bears with great charm and majesty lie down on the chestnut leaves to sleep. The poplars on the plain undress. Silkworm eggs will be taken soon to their winter shelter. Autumn is about to end, The earth to enter its pregnant sleep. And we will pass again one more winter with this great rage inside, warming ourselves in the fire of our sacred hope... November 12, 1945 They say it doesn`t allow description— the misery of Istanbul. They say the people are crushed by hunger. They say tuberculosis lurks everywhere. And the young girls, they say, are taken in the ruins and in theater loges. This black news comes from my distant city, from the city of hard-working honest people, from the real Istanbul, My love, from the city which is your home, which I carry on my back in a bag wherever I am exiled wherever I am in prison Which I bear in my heart like the grieving for a lost child like your image which I hold in my eyes... November 13, 1945 Although you`ll find carnations still in vases now and then, seeds are being scattered in the fields plowed up long ago for planting and olives, stuffed with oil, are being picked now. On one side we`re moving into winter on another the earth is being opened for the seedlings of spring. As for me filled with longing and heavy with impatience for great travels, I am lying in Bursa like a ship at anchor... November 20, 1945 Take out from your chest the dress you wore the first time I saw you and dress up like the spring trees. Put in your hair the carnation I am sending you from prison, Lift your broad forehead white and creased with those lines that should be kissed, And by no means look tired or worried on such a day. The wife of Nazim Hikmet must be beautiful like the flag of a rebellion on such a day! December 4, 1945 A hole wore through the ship`s hull the slaves cut to pieces their chains the wind from the northeast blew about to hurl the ship upon the rocks. This world this pirate ship will sink. Whatever happens it will sink. And we will create a free, spacious, hopeful world like your face my Piraye... December 5, 1945 They are the enemies of hope, my love, the enemies of a life that grows and develops of a tree that bears fruit of water that flows. Because death is stamped on their foreheads— their teeth rot their flesh decays— They`ll disappear and never come back. And surely, my love, surely this lovely country of mine will be a garden of brothers without masters or slaves... December 6, 1945 Enemy to Receb the towel-maker in Bursa Enemy to Hasan the fitter in Karabük factory Enemy to the woman Hatçe the village peasant Enemy to Süleyman the worker Enemy to me Enemy to you Enemy to thinking men. My love, they are the enemy of the country which houses them. December 7, 1945 On the plain trees burn in a final effort spangles of gold copper brass and bronze. Hooves of oxen slowly, softly two by two sink in dampened earth. And the mountains are soaked and gray submerged in mist... It`s finished. Perhaps this day is all that is left of autumn. And now the wild geese wing past heading for Iznik lake. Something cool in the air like the smell of soot in the air the smell of snow in the air... Now to be outside! Now to charge a horse straight for the mountains! "But you don`t know how to ride," you`ll say. Don`t laugh at me and don`t be jealous This new love of nature I`ve acquired in prison I love almost but not as much as I love you... And both of you so far away... December 12, 1945 Snow suddenly set in at night morning began with crows scattering from white branches. Winter on the Bursa plain past the eye`s reaching recalling endlessness. My love, the season burst through to change after continuous struggle, And proud, working hard beneath the snow Life still pushing on and up... December 13, 1945 Damn, the winter has come down hard. Who knows what`s happened to you and to my Istanbul. Have you coal? Can you get wood? Stuff newspaper in the window cracks, and go to bed early. There`s nothing in the house to sell, I know... Even when we shiver half hungry half full Even in this we are in the majority in our country in our city in the world. December 14, 1945
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