Nazim Hikmet
I carved
your name on my watchband
with my
fingernail.
Where I am,
you know,
I don't have
a pearl-handled jackknife
(they won't
give me anything sharp)
or a plane tree with its head in the clouds.
Trees may
grow in the yard,
but I'm not
allowed
to see the sky overhead.....
How many
others are in this place?
I don't
know.
I'm alone
far from them,
they're all
together far from me.
To talk anyone
besides myself
is forbidden.
So I talk to
myself.
But I find
my conversation so boring,
my dear wife, that I sing songs.
And what do
you know,
that awful,
always off-key voice of mine
touches me so
that my heart breaks.
And just
like the barefoot orphan
lost in the
snow
in those old
sad stories, my heart
- with moist
blue eyes
and a little
red runny rose-
wants to snuggle up in your arms.
It doesn't
make me blush
that right now
I'm this weak,
this selfish,
this human simply.
No doubt my
state can be explained
physiologically,
psychologically, etc.
Or maybe
it's
this barred window,
this earthen jug,
these four walls,
which for
months have kept me from hearing
another human voice.
It's five
o'clock, my dear.
Outside,
with its dryness,
eerie whispers,
mud roof,
and lame,
skinny horse
standing
motionless in infinity
-I mean,
it's enough to drive the man inside crazy with grief-
outside,
with all its machinery and all its art,
a plains
night comes down red on treeless space.
Again today,
night will fall in no time.
A light will
circle the lame, skinny horse.
And the
treeless space, in this hopeless landscape
stretched
out before me like the body of a hard man,
will
suddenly be filled with stars.
We'll reach
the inevitable end once more,
which is to
say the stage is set
again today
for an elaborate nostalgia.
Me,
the man
inside,
once more
I'll exhibit my customary talent,
and singing
an old-fashioned lament
in the reedy
voice of my childhood,
once more,
by God, it will crush my unhappy heart
to hear you
inside my head,
so far
away, as if
I were watching you
in a smoky, broken mirror...
It's spring
outside, my dear wife, spring.
Outside on
the plain, suddenly the smell
of fresh
earth, birds singing, etc.
It's spring,
my dear wife,
the plain
outside sparkles...
And inside
the bed comes alive with bugs,
the water jug no longer freezes,
and in the
morning sun floods the concrete...
The sun-
every day
till noon now
it comes and
goes
from me,
flashing off
and on...
And as the
day turns to afternoon, shadows climb the walls,
the glass of
the barred window catches fire,
and it's night outside,
a cloudless spring night...
And inside
this is spring's darkest hour.
In short,
the demon called freedom,
with its
glittering scales and fiery eyes,
possesses
the man inside
especially in spring...
I know this
from experience, my dear wife,
from experience...
Sunday
today.
Today they
took me out in the sun for the first time.
And I just
stood there, struck for the first time in my life
by how far away the sky is,
how blue
and how wide.
Then I
respectfully sat down on the earth.
I leaned
back against the wall.
For a moment
no trap to fall into,
no struggle,
no freedom, no wife.
Only earth,
sun, and me...
I am happy.