Nazim Hikmet
You waste the attention
of your eyes,
the glittering labour of
your hands,
and knead the dough
enough for dozens of loaves
of which you'll taste not
a morsel;
you are free to slave for
others--
you are free to make the
rich richer.
The moment you're born
they plant around you
mills that grind lies
lies to last you a
lifetime.
You keep thinking in your
great freedom
a finger on your temple
free to have a free
conscience.
Your head bent as if
half-cut from the nape,
your arms long, hanging,
your saunter about in
your great freedom:
you're free
with the freedom of being
unemployed.
You love your country
as the nearest, most
precious thing to you.
But one day, for example,
they may endorse it over
to America,
and you, too, with your
great freedom--
you have the freedom to
become an air-base.
You may proclaim that one
must live
not as a tool, a number
or a link
but as a human being--
then at once they
handcuff your wrists.
You are free to be
arrested, imprisoned
and even hanged.
There's neither an iron,
wooden
nor a tulle curtain
in your life;
there's no need to choose
freedom:
you are free.
But this kind of freedom
is a sad affair under the
stars.
