POEMS BY

COPYRIGHT, 1954, BY MASSES & MAINSTREAM, INC.

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

First Printing: January, 1954

A MASSES & MAINSTREAM PUBLICATION

Published in January, 1954, by MASSES & MAINSTREAM, INC.

832 Broadway, New York 3, N. Y. PRINTED IN U.S.A.
 CONTENTS
A Note on Nazim Hikmet, by Samuel Sillen
Optimism
Perhaps
Farewell
Microcosm
The Wall of Imperialism
Like a Song Sung Together
Drizzling
It Is Snowing In the Night
About Victory
Letters From Prison (1942-1946)
From the Epic of the Second World War
Advice to a Fellow Prisoner
Your Hands and Their Lies
Angina Pectoris
About Death
Plea
The Funniest Creature
The Twentieth Century
To Paul Robeson
The Enemies
The Fifth Day of a Hunger Strike
Morning
That Is the Question
Evening Stroll
A Sad Freedom
 A NOTE ON NAZIM HIKMET
By Samuel Sillen

THE POETRY OF Nazim Hikmet first reached us in America during the world-
wide movement that won his release in 1950 from a Turkish dungeon where be
had been tormented for thirteen long years. We felt an immediate kinship with the
poet who from a distant prison wrote to Paul Robeson:

“They are scared, Negro brother,

Our songs scare them, Robeson.”

And as we read his verse it seemed incredible that we should have made his
acquaintance so late. For here, unmistakably, was an artist who belonged with
Neruda and Aragon among the great poets of our age.

We learned that his poems, smuggled out of prison, were passing from hand to
hand throughout Turkey. They appeared without his name, yet they were
unfailingly recognized. For the oppressed people of his land saw Nazim Hikmet’s
signature in the plain speech which is their speech, in the daring realism, the
irresistible optimism and love and longing for freedom. And across the frontiers
his lines rang out to all people who treasure beauty and peace.

Born in Istanbul, in 1902, the son of a high government official, Nazim Hikmet
started writing poetry at the age of fourteen, while a student at the Naval
Academy. Following World War I, when large sections of Turkey were occupied
by the forces of Anglo-American imperialism, he joined the national
independence movement. Escaping from Istanbul, he came in close contact with
the peasants and workers who inspired his militant poems. He abandoned his
naval career and took part in the bourgeois nationalist revolt between 1919 and
1922 against the Ottoman rulers backed by the Allied powers.

The young poet was deeply stirred by the Socialist Revolution in Russia, and in a
later autobiographical work he vividly describes how he, the grandson of a pasha,
became a Communist. His acceptance of Marxism was indeed the turning point in
his life and poetry. To see socialism in the making, Hikmet visited the young
Soviet state in the early 1920’s, at a time, he wrote, “when the waves were
storming the heavens, when one-sixth of the globe had given the wheel of history
a sharp push forward...” In Moscow be developed a close friendship with
Mayakovsky, whose poetry, with its directness and its strong accent on serving as
well as leading the people, was to influence his own work powerfully. Upon his
return to Turkey in 1925, Hikmet was seized by the police and thrown into the
Ankara jail for three years. From then on his life was to be a series of heresy trials
and jail sentences in the midst of which he turned out ever more popular poems,
plays, political essays. In his poems of the 1920’s and 1930’s, deeply imbued with
patriotism, he continued to attack the capitalist powers that threatened a new
world slaughter. In other writings he held up to contempt those hirelings of the
imperialists who were betraying progressive Turks to the political police. “Enter a
house where there is a plague, but do not take one step across a threshold where
there is an agent provocateur, “he wrote in typical vein. “And if your hand
accidentally touches his, wash it seven times. And I will tear up my only holiday
shirt and give it to you for a towel.”

In 1938 the great people’s poet of Turkey was given a 28-year jail sentence by a
court holding star chamber proceedings aboard a battleship. It was charged that
some of his poems had been found among Black Sea sailors and Military
Academy soldiers. Actually these poems were then available in any bookstore.
But this did not prevent a conviction for “spreading communistic ideas,” a phrase
which Hitler had already made familiar and which McCarthyism was to echo in
our own land.

But nothing could silence Nazim Hikmet, as we can see from the poems in this
collection. Despite an ailing heart and the sadism of his jailers, be rose to new
heights of creative power during the thirteen years of his imprisonment. In our
time we have had a great literature produced in prison by dauntless anti-fascist
fighters. We have had Julius Fuchik’s Notes From the Gallows, the letters of
Danielle Casanova, the last testament of Gabriel Pen, and indeed the letters and
poems of American political prisoners. Nazim Hikmet’s songs from jail are
noble and triumphant. In solitary confinement the fighter-poet warms his cold cell
with “the great flame of anger and proud hope.” It is he who sustains those who
are not behind bars.

Keenly attuned to everything that goes on in the outside world, he writes poems
of towering force during World War II, impatiently awaiting the rout of the
Nazis, exulting in the power of the Soviet people to defend socialism. His humor,
his faith, his love of the people cannot be quenched. “My strength in this big
world,” he writes, “lies in not being alone.” And he is with the fighters for
happiness everywhere, in Spain, in China, in India, in Africa, in our own country.
The prison walls disappear as he sees his brothers everywhere bent over him in
the night, and his heart swells with pride and gratitude.

His release in 1950, following a hunger strike that brought him close to death, was
a joyous triumph for his friends throughout the world. It was made possible by the
defenders of peace who had found inspiration in his songs. Progressive American
writers took a modest part in the fight for his freedom with a protest
demonstration, sponsored by Masses & Mainstream, in front of the Turkish
consulate in New York. They were aware that U.S. imperialism bears a heavy
responsibility for the fact that reaction rules in Turkey, financed and armed by the
Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO. Our link with the life of
Nazim Hikmet is by no means remote. His latest poems, written in the Soviet
Union, in the Chinese People’s Republic, in Czechoslovakia and other democratic
countries where he has found a welcome refuge, seem addressed directly to us
with their warnings against resurgent fascism and the drive of Wall Street to a
new war of world conquest.

Students of Turkish literature agree that Nazim Hikmet’ s poetry launched a

revolution not only in content but in form. He abandoned both the complicated
Arabic meters of the old palace poetry and the simpler but static meter introduced
in the past century by bourgeois writers. He has created a distinctive rhythm, with
alternating long and short lines, unrhymed. Hikmet also broke with the stilted
conventions of traditional poetic language; his speech is that of the common folk,
whose crisp images and wise proverbs he weaves into his verse. How much is lost
in translation we cannot, of course, say. But certain it is that in the following
poems we encounter a shining miracle of clarity and directness, a fusion of
political and personal strength which achieves extraordinary richness of feeling.

In a recent letter to young French poets, Hikmet spoke of the need to achieve
above all a lucid, full communication with audiences of plain people. He is
scornful of those decadents who perversely to be measured by the smallness of
their coterie. Few living poets have so amply and persuasively demonstrated the
truth that poetry draws its main strength from the struggles and hopes of the
people. His verses ring with partisanship. There is no division between Hikmet
the political poet and Hikmet the lyrical poet. With consummate artistry he has
achieved that synthesis of the fighter and the creator, the distinct individual and
the representative man of the masses, which is the hallmark of greatness in our
time.
 OPTIMISM

We will see beautiful days, children

we will see sunny days.
We will sail our speedboats into the open sea, children
we will sail them into the bright blue open sea. …
Imagine going full speed
the motor turning
the motor roaring.
Oh children who can tell
how wonderful
to kiss when your speed reaches 100 miles…

True for us today

there are flower gardens on Fridays, on Sundays
only on Fridays
only on Sundays. …

True today
we admire the stores on lighted streets
as if listening to a fairy tale,
those stores with glass walls
seventy-seven stories high.

True when we cry for an answer

the black book opens for us:
the jail.
Leather belts seize our arms
broken bones
blood.

True now on our table

there is meat but once a week.
And our children come home from work
like pallid skeletons.

True now....
But believe me
will see beautiful days, children we will see sunny days.
We will sail our speedboats into the open sea
we will sail them into the bright blue open sea...

1930
 PERHAPS

Perhaps I,
long before
that day
Swinging at the end of the bridge
Will cast my shadow on the asphalt

Perhaps I,
long after
that day
A trace of gray beard on my clean-shaven chin
Will still be alive

And I,
long after that day
If I remain alive
Leaning against the walls
in the city squares,
Will play the violin on holiday evenings
For the old men who, like me, survived the last struggle
All around us lighted sidewalks in a wonderful night
And the footsteps of new people
Singing new songs.

1930

FAREWELL

Farewell
my friends
farewell!
I am carrying you in my heart
deep in my heart
and my struggle in my mind.
Farewell
my friends
farewell!
Don’t line up on the shore
like birds in picture-cards
to wave kerchiefs at me
I want none of this.
From head to toe
I see myself in the eyes of my friends
Oh friends
brothers in struggle
brothers in work
comrades
Farewell without words.
The nights will fasten a lock on the door
The years will knit their net on the windows
And I will shout the song of the prison
As a fighting song.
We will meet again,
my friends,
we will meet again
Together we will laugh at the sun
Together we will fight
Oh friends
brothers in struggle
brothers in work
comrades
Farewell.

1931

MICROCOSM1

When the starlight flowing into my eye like a golden drop

Pierced the darkness
of space
for the first time,
there wasn’t one single eye on the earth
looking into the sky....
The stars were old,
the earth was a child.

1
This is a fragment from an epic on the life and death of an Indian revolutionary, Benerjee,
published in 1934.
The stars are far from us
but so very far
so very far. …
Our world is small among the stars
but so very small
so very small. …

And Asia
is one fifth of the world,
And India
is a country in Asia.
Calcutta is a city in India
Benerjee is a man in Calcutta.

And I am bringing you the news:

In India
In the city of Calcutta
they stopped on his way
A man who was walking
and they chained him.

And I don’t bother anymore

to lift my head toward the bright skies.
If the stars are far,
if the earth is small
I don’t care at all
I don’t mind. …

I want you to know that I find

more astonishing
more powerful
more mysterious and gigantic

THIS MAN
stopped on his way
and chained.

1934
 THE WALL OF IMPERIALISM

(Written about the Wall of Imperialism surrounding the East that was shoved
back into the Mediterranean Sea from Izmir and will
soon be forced back to the Indian Ocean from Bombay.)

That wall
That wall
is rising like a second Balkan in the Balkans.

That wall, that wall…

They are shooting our people
in front of that wall!
Every single foot of land along that wall
has its long epic,
as long
as that wall.
They are plucking the male organs
of those who die in front of that wall
to make youth serums
for the strawlike, syphilitic skeletons
of the millionaires!
The millionaires
buried in the flesh of whores
are listening like a radio-concert
to the death orders
given in front of that wall
with bullet sounds!
That wall
there is a mobilization in front of that wall.
A mobilization more widespread
more accursed
than in 1914....

Just as darkness
in the sunlight runs to hide in a hole
imperialists are running
to this mobilization...
The League of Nations of the British warships
the diplomat with gunpowder-scented white gloves
the producer of rotten human flesh
the imperialist general,
the Second International,
The philosopher
who fertilizes and digs the soil
 of “Religion”
to pick up its poisonous flowers,
and writes his works on bank-notes,
The poet in love with permanganate,
the chemist who sells death rays
all are mobilized
mobilized
under the banner of that wall.
That wall
That wall, that wall,
They are shooting our people
in front of that wall....
 LIKE A SONG SUNG TOGETHER2

(In the preface to the “Epic of Sheik Bedreddin,” published in 1936, Nazim
explains that while in prison he read a distorted history of a popular uprising that
took place in Turkey in the fourteenth century. He felt so disgusted with the biased
and sketchy treatment of this revolt that he decided to write a long epic which
would do it justice. Nazim wanted to show that Turkish history is not devoid of
heroic uprisings of the downtrodden masses against their oppressors. The
uprising of Sheik Bedreddin was not confined to the Turkish masses. The Greek
and Jewish inhabitants of the region called Karaburun, in the western part of
Anatolia, across from the island of Chios, also participated in this struggle for a
better life. The peasant disciple of Sheik Bedreddin, Mustafa Berklujeh, led the
revolting people in afight against the overwhelming forces of the Ottoman Empire
headed by the Royal Prince Murad. The movement of Sheik Bedreddin was a
primitive type of communism aiming at common ownership of land, tools,
foodstuffs, clothes. The movement was crushed in a brutal way. Sheik Bedreddin
and Mustafa Berldujeh were hanged They became martyrs and their followers
never lost their faith in ultimate victory.)

It was hot
very hot
The heat was like a knife with a bloody handle,
with a dull blade.

It was hot
The clouds were loaded,
ready to burst
to burst right away.

Without moving he looked down

from the rocks
his eyes, like two eagles, descended over the plain
There
the softest and hardest
the stingiest and most generous
the most loving
the greatest and most beautiful woman
the EARTH
was about to give birth
to give birth right away.

It was hot

2
From the “Epic of Sheik Bedreddin.”
He watched the horizon at the end of the earth
with knitted eyebrows.
Plucking children’s heads
like bloody poppies in the fields,
dragging naked shrieks in its wake,
a five-crested fire came gushing from the horizon-
the Royal Heir Murat was coming.
The Royal order issued to Murat
was to reach the land of Aydin
and fall on Mustafa, the follower of Bedreddin.

It was hot
Mustafa the follower of Bedreddin looked
he looked, Mustafa the peasant
looked without fear
without anger
without a smile
he looked straight ahead
standing erect
he looked.

The softest and hardest

the stingiest and most generous
the most loving
the greatest and most beautiful woman
the EARTH
was about to give birth
to give birth right away.

He looked
From the rocks Bedreddin’s braves looked at the horizon
The end of this earth was getting closer and closer
on the wings of a bird of death carrying a Royal order.

Those men looking down from the rocks

had opened this earth
with its grapes, its figs, its pomegranates,
its cattle with hair blonder and milk thicker than honey,
its narrow-hipped and lion-maned horses,
had opened it like a brother’s table
with no walls and no boundaries.

It was hot
He looked
Bedreddin’s braves looked at the horizon
The softest and hardest
the stingiest and most generous
the most loving
the greatest and most beautiful woman
the EARTH
was about to give birth
to give birth right away.
It was hot
the clouds were loaded
the first drop of rain, like a sweet word
was about to fall to the ground

Suddenly,
as if flowing from the rocks,
pouring from the skies,
growing out of the ground
like the latest product of this earth,
Bedreddin’s braves jumped on the Royal Heir’s army
They were clad in seamless white shirts,
bare-headed
bare-footed, their swords naked.

They fought fiercely

Turkish peasants from Aydin
Greek sailors from Chios
Jewish merchants
the ten thousand comrades of Berklujeh Mustafa
plunged like ten thousand axes
into the forest of the enemy.
The ranks with red and green flags,
ornamented shields and bronze helmets
were torn into pieces
but when in the pouring rain the day passed into evening
the ten thousand were but two thousand.

To be able, singing all together

to pull the nets together from the sea,
working the iron into a lace together,
to be able to plough the land
and eat all together the figs as sweet as honey,
to be able to say:
All together
Everywhere
In everything
But on the cheek of the beloved,
the ten thousand gave their eight thousand.
They were defeated.
On the seamless white shirts of the vanquished
The victors
wiped their bloody swords
And the earth they bad tilled together
with brotherly hands
like a song sung together
was trodden under the hoofs
of horses born in the Palace of Edrine.

1936

DRIZZLING3

It is drizzling,
scarily
in a low voice
like a talk of treason.

It is drizzling
like a renegade’s white and naked feet
running on the damp and dark earth.

It is drizzling.
In the market of Serez
in front of a coppersmith’s shop
my Bedreddin is hanging on a tree.

It is drizzling.
It is late on a starless night.
Getting soaked in the rain
the naked flesh of my sheik is swinging
from a leafless branch.

It is drizzling.
The market of Serez is mute,
the market of Serez is blind.

3
From the “Epic of Sheik Bedreddin.”
In the air the cursed sadness of silence and blindness
The market of Serez has covered its face with its hands.

It is drizzling

1936

IT IS SNOWING IN THE NIGHT

Neither to hear voices from the world beyond

nor strive to bring into my verses the “unfathomable”
nor search for the rhyme with the care of a jeweler,
no beautiful words, profound discourse
Thank God
I am above
well above this tonight.

Tonight
I am a street singer, there is no talent in my voice;
my voice is singing for you a song you will not bear.

It is snowing in the night,

You are at the door of Madrid.
In front of you an army
killing the most beautiful things we own,
hope, yearning, freedom and children,
The City....

It is snowing
And perhaps tonight
your wet feet are cold.
It is snowing
And while I am thinking about you
a bullet might be hitting you right now;
then for you no more
snow, wind, day or night...

It is snowing.
Before you stood at the door of Madrid
 saying “no pasaran”
you must have been living somewhere.

Who knows
Perhaps
You came from the coal mines of Asturias
Perhaps around your head a bloody bandage
hides a wound you got in the North.
And perhaps you were the one who fired the last shot in the suburbs
while the “Junkers” were burning Bilbao.
Or perhaps you were a hired hand
on the farm of some Count Fernando Valeskeras de Cordoban
Perhaps you had a small shop on the “Plaza del Sol”
you sold colorful Spanish fruits.
Perhaps you had no craft, perhaps you had a beautiful voice.
Perhaps you were a student of philosophy or law
and your books were crushed by the wheels of an Italian tank
on the campus of your University.
Perhaps you did not believe in heaven and perhaps you have on your chest a little
cross hanging on a string.

Who are you, what is your name, when were you born?
I have never seen, I will never see your face.
Who knows
Perhaps it looks like the faces
of those who beat Kolchak in Siberia;
Perhaps it looks a little like the face
of someone who lies on the battlefield of Dumlupinar4
you might even look something like Robespierre.

I have never seen, I will never see your face,

you have never heard, you will never hear my name.
There are between us seas and mountains,
my cursed helplessness,
and the “Committee of Non-Intervention.”

I cannot come to you

I cannot even send you
a case of cartridges
fresh eggs
or a pair of woolen socks.

And yet I know,

in this cold snowy weather
your wet feet guarding the door of Madrid
are cold like two naked children.
I know,
everything great and beautiful there is,
everything great and beautiful man has still to create
that is, everything my nostalgic soul hopes for
Smiles in the eyes
of the sentry at the door of Madrid.
And tomorrow, like yesterday, like tonight
I can do nothing else but love him.

December 25, 1937

ABOUT VICTORY

Your hands pressed on the wound

biting your lip till it bleeds
you must bear the awful pain.
Hope is now but
a bare and ruthless shriek.
Victory
will be snatched with teeth and nails
and nothing will be forgiven.
The days are dark
the days are bringing news of death.
The enemy is harsh
cruel and sly.
Our men are dying in the struggle
- Yet how they deserved to live –
Our men are dying
- so many of them –
As if with their songs and flags
they were out for a parade on a holiday
so young
so reckless...
The days are dark
the days are bringing news of death.
With our own hands we burned most beautiful worlds
and our eyes can no longer cry,
Leaving us a little sad and hard
our tears are gone
so this is why
 we have forgotten how to forgive...
The goal we have to reach
will be reached shedding blood,
Victory will be snatched
with teeth and nails
and nothing will be forgiven.

1941

LETTERS FROM PRISON (1942-1946)

My only one
in your last letter
You say:
“My head is aching
my heart is bewildered.”
you say:
“If they hang you
If I lose you
I cannot live.”

You will live my darling wife,

My memory will fade like black smoke in the wind.
You will live, red-haired sister of my heart.
In the twentieth century
mourning the dead
lasts but one year.

Death...
A corpse swinging at the end of a rope,
I cannot resign my heart
to such a death.
But be assured my beloved
that if the hairy hand of the hangman
ties a rope
around my neck,
they will look in vain
into the blue eyes of Nazim
to see fear.
In the dim light of my last morning
I will see my friends and you,
and I will only
take to the grave
the sorrow of an unfinished song.

My wife, my own
my tender-hearted bee
with eyes sweeter than honey!
Why did I ever write you
they wanted a death sentence,
The trial is only just starting
and a man’s head cannot be plucked
like a turnip.

Don’t give it another thought.

All this is a distant prospect,
if you have some money
buy me flannel drawers:
I have sciatic pains in my leg.
And don’t forget
the wife of a prisoner
must always have cheerful thoughts.

II

The wind flows and passes,

The same cherry branch never swings twice
in the same wind.
On the tree the birds are singing:
Wings want to fly.
The door is closed:
it has to be forced open.

I want you:
Life should be beautiful like you,
A friend, a beloved like you...
I know, the banquet of misery
has not yet come to an end,
But it will end.

III

Kneeling I am looking at the earth

I am looking at the branches with their bright blue blossoms
You are like the spring earth my beloved
I am looking at you.

Lying on my back I see the sky

You are like spring, you are like the sky
My beloved I see you.

At night, in the country, I built a fire, I touch the fire

You are like a fire lit under the stars
My beloved I am touching you.

I am among men, I love mankind

I love action
I love thought
I love my struggle
You are a human being inside my struggle my beloved
I love you.

IV

Beyond description - they say - the misery of Istanbul,

Starvation - they say - is reaping so many lives,
Tuberculosis - they say is so widespread.
Tiny little girls they say -
in back alleys, in movie houses.

Bad news is coming from my distant home town:

the city of honest, industrious, poor people
My real Istanbul.

My darling, it is the place you live in,

It is the city
I carry on my back, in my bag
Wherever I am exiled, wherever I am jailed,
I bear in my heart like a sharp pain
caused by the loss of a child.
It is the city
I carry in my eyes like your image.

It is nine o’clock
the bell rang on the square
the cell doors will be closing any minute.
Prison lasted a little too long this time
 eight years.
To live is a hopeful job my beloved
To live: it’s just as serious as to love you
To think of you is a beautiful
a hopeful thing...
But hope does not satisfy me anymore
I don’t want to listen to a song
I want to sing my own song.

VI

Warm and lively

like blood rushing from a vein
the South winds are blowing.
Listen to the tunes
the pulse beats slower.
It must be snowing on top of Uludagh4
and the bears up there
on the reddened chestnut leaves
must be lost in a sweet and beautiful sleep.
In the plain the willows must be undressing
The silkworms will soon shut themselves in.
Autumn will soon be over
The earth is about to fall sound asleep
Another winter will pass
and we will warm ourselves up
at the fire of our wrath
and of our sacred hope.

VII

Our son is sick

His father is in jail
Your heavy head is resting on your tired hands
We are at the same point, this world and ourselves.

Men will carry men

From bad days to better days
Our son will get well
His father will come out of jail
You will smile deep in your golden eyes
We are at the same point, this world and ourselves.

4
Mount Olympus, near Bursa
 VIII

The most beautiful ocean

is the one we have not yet seen,
The most beautiful child
has not yet grown up.
Our most beautiful days
are those we have not yet lived.
And the most beautiful things I would like to tell you
I have not yet told.

IX

I saw you in my dream last night

you lifted your head,
you looked at me with your amber eyes
your moist lips were moving,
but I couldn’t hear your voice.

Somewhere in the dark night the clock strikes like bright news.
I can hear eternity whispering in the air
“The Song of Memo”5 in my canary’s red cage,
in a ploughed field
the noise of the growing seeds cracking in the earth,
and the righteous uproar of a glorious crowd.

Your moist lips were moving

but I couldn’t hear your voice.
I woke up swearing.
I had fallen asleep on my book.
Among all these voices,
didn’t I hear your voice too?

FROM THE “EPIC OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR”

5
Memo was a “Robin Hood” who, with his band, robbed the rich to give to the poor. “The Song
of Memo” is a folk song in his praise.
We who had a pleasant time in this world
without spoiling our hands in drudgery
could we say that we have lived?
It would be the same thing
even if we survived for another hundred years
there is only today,
there is no yesterday;
And the end of that hundred years too will come soon.
I envy Bedreddin, Darwin, Pasteur, Gorky, Marx,
and Edison;
Believe me, not for their fame and their reputation,
The Mosque of Sultan Selim is still standing in Edrine
Though Sinan has passed away
A long time ago…
 What I envy them for
is their having fought and created with love and enthusiasm Yes
Sir,
their having lived a hundred percent as long as they were alive.

***

Jevdet Bey was lost in contemplation of the stars

the sky was like a sparkling, phosphorescent sea.
The sky was tired, endless, gloomy and warm
Jevdet Bey put his glasses on with great seriousness
(as if there was a book in the sky and he was
going to read it.)
- Like slave-ships with black sails
lands loaded with men are passing, following each other:
Africa, the Pacific Islands, China, India,
the Near and Middle East (including Anatolia)
without counting the merchants, manufacturers, lords and so on,
one and a half billion
not match sticks
but MEN.
One and half billion men are passing through the sky...
Jevdet Bey is thinking tirelessly.
There are a lot of beautiful things in this world
which make life worth living
and yet, apple of my eye, the men in the black-sailed ships…
For a long time Jevdet Bey could not take out of his mind
the image of these black-sailed ships
Then a single man sitting, all huddled up,
appeared in front of him,
he saw him clearly as if he could touch him:
he could see him squatting on the quay below
and up in the stars.

His knees thrust up

his hand as furrowed as a ploughed field.
- Oh My Lord, thought Jevdet Bey,
how can a man be so tired.
How many hours does he work every day?
twelve?
thirteen?
fifteen?
Who knows what he is thinking about?
My God, how little I know about real men.
And how strange,
they are as much alike as two apples,
this man
 and for instance a king, an emperor.

Both eat, digest and eject

In this respect they are no different
from the caterpillar, the elephant,
or even the artichoke.
And the king, the emperor…
How did the king - the emperor, get into my mind?
I saw him in a film recently,
he was watching a football match
he was making funny sounds, clapping his hands
yes sir, he looks a little like a simpleton.
How strange
His Majesty’s wife is a member of the grocers’ class
Well anyway a freckled, fat woman
she should only know what I think of her...
Jevdet Bey laughed
his big white mustache escaped from between his teeth
he looked at the stork sleeping under an orange tree.
- How lucky you are, he said, how lucky you are Pilgrim Father
you are not able to think.
No, I am lying, apple of my eye,
to be able to think is happiness,
a dreadful happiness sometimes
but happiness anyhow.
Jevdet Bey put his big mustache back in his mouth
he closed his eyes
and enjoying his dreadful happiness
fell asleep on his easy-chair.
I look up;
I see a submarine up,
high up above my head,
yes sir, just like a fish,
silent like a fish within its armor, in the water.
The light up there is aqua green,
yes sir.
it’s all green up there,
all bright
millions of candles are shining up there like so many stars.
Up there, Oh... my wandering soul,
the first moving flesh of our world is up there,
the secret voluptuousness of a silver washbowl,
yes sir, the secret voluptuousness
of a washbowl with a bird design.
And the red hair of the woman in whose arms I am,
Up there colorful weeds and rootless trees
 and whirling creatures of the ocean world.
Up there are life, salt and iodine,
our beginning is up there, pilgrim father
up there is our beginning.

**

Hans Muller from Munich,

before he became a submarine sailor
in the spring of 1939
was the third private from the right
in the fourth squad
of the sixth regiment
of Hitler’s Storm Troops.
Hans Muller from Munich
used to love three things:
1—Golden-foamed barley water
2—Anna, plump and white like Prussian potatoes
3—Red cabbage
Hans Muller from Munich
recognized three duties:
1—To salute his superiors with lightning speed
2—To swear by his gun
3—To stop at least three Jews a day
and curse their ancestors
Hans Muller from Munich
had three fears in his mind, in his heart, on his tongue:
1—Der Fuehrer
2—Der Fuehrer
3—Der Fuehrer

Hans Muller from Munich

had a happy life
until the spring of 1939.
And he was surprised to hear
Anna with her flesh as white as Prussian potatoes
and her voice as stately as the C in a Wagnerian opera
complain about the shortage of butter and eggs.
He used to tell her:
- Just think Anna,
I will wear a new battle belt,
I will wear shiny boots,
You will wear wax flowers in your hair
we will walk under swords crossed over our heads.
And positively
 we will have twelve children, all boys.
Just think Anna
if in order to eat butter and eggs
we don’t make guns and pistols,
how could our twelve children fight tomorrow?
For they were never born,
yes sir, for before his wedding night with Anna
Hans Muller went to the war himself.
And now, in the autumn of 1941,
at the bottom of the Atlantic
he is standing in front of me.

His thin blond hair is wet

bitterness on his red, pointed nose
and sadness at the edges of his thin lips.
The twelve sons of the native of Munich could not fight
Although he is standing next to me,
he is looking at me from afar
as the dead look at one’s face.
I know that he will never see Anna again
never drink barley water
and never eat red cabbage.
I know all these, apple of my eye,
but he doesn’t know it,
his eyes are a little wet
he does not wipe them.
He has money in his pocket
which does not increase or decrease.
And the funniest of all
he can’t kill anybody anymore
and he can’t die again.
Soon his body will swell,
and he will go up;
the seas will rock him
and the fish will eat his pointed nose.
Don’t say what a beast, Pilgrim father
You too are a beast but an intelligent one.
And Jevdet Bey looked fondly at his stork...
The perfume of the organe trees pervaded the night.
Jevdet Bey and his stork were in the garden.
They had brought a radio to the garden.
London was giving the Atlantic war news.
Jevdet Bey lost in his thoughts,
was dreaming he was at the bottom of the Atlantic.
Its long red bill
hanging on its white breast
its wings clipped short,
standing on one leg the stork was dozing.
Down in the port, the Mediterranean,
naked, like a young mother.

**

The comrades are sound asleep

Ahmet from Turkestan is sleeping in the hall
on his right the Ukrainian Yuncherka
the Annenian Sagamanyan on the top bed,
the smell of sweating men, of army coats...

Ivan sat on his bed

and yawning bent down toward his boots.
He took off the left one,
then lifted up his head and listened:
there was a hum outside
the door opened wide,
the guard yelled: to arms!

They jumped up,

It was Ivan who was out first,
one foot with a boot
the other without.
The big forest on the south-west is burning
the air is like blood flowing ceaselessly
the guns are roaring, the guns are roaring…
High above an air squadron passed.
the first enemy tanks appeared in the south,
six steel monsters following each other.

The year is 1941

the day June 22,
Ivan had never quarreled with anybody in his life,
he had never felt hatred toward any nation.

**

Under the snow from end to end

under the snow the lonely street.
Over the snow the partisan:
her feet naked
her arms tied at her back
in underwear,
She is walking before the bayonet
 going from one end to the other.
The guard was cold, they went to the shelter.
The guard warmed himself up, they came out.
This lasted from ten at night to two in the morning.
At two o’clock the guard was changed
And the partisan sat
Motionless on the wooden bench.

The partisan
is eighteen years old.
The partisan
knew that she would be killed soon.
To die and to be killed:
the difference was small in the flame of her wrath.
And she was too young and too healthy
to be afraid of death, to grieve.
She looked at her bare feet:
they were swollen
they were frozen and chapped, and red all over.
But the partisan
was beyond pain.
She was wrapped in her anger and her faith
just as she was wrapped in her skin.

**

Her name was Zoya,

she told them she was called Tanya.
Tanya!
In the Bursa jail, your picture is in front of me.
Perhaps you have not even heard the name of Bursa.
My Bursa is a green and a gentle place.
In the Bursa jail, your picture is in front of me.
The year is no more 1941
the year is 1945.
Your people are not defending the gates of Moscow anymore
At the gates of Berlin your people,
our people,
all the people of an honest world,
are fighting.

1945
 ADVICE TO A FELLOW PRISONER

Just because you did not give up your hopes,

for the world, for your country, and for humanity
they either send you to the gallows,
or put you in jail,
for ten years, for fifteen years
or, who cares, for even longer.

Never say,
“I wish I were swinging
at the end of a rope like a flag”
you must keep on living,
perhaps, living is not a pleasure any more,
but it is your duty
to spite the enemy
to live one more day.
In your jail one part of yourself may be all alone
like a stone at the bottom of the well
But the other part of you
should mingle so with the crowds of the world
that in your jail you will tremble
with every rustling leaf forty days distance away from you.
It is sweet but dangerous
to wait for letters,
and to sing sad songs,
to keep awake till morning
with your eyes fixed on the ceiling.
Look at your face whenever you shave
forget your age,
protect yourself from lice
and from the spring evenings.
And then you should never forget
how to eat your bread to the last crumb
and how to laugh heartily.

And who knows,

maybe your woman doesn’t love you anymore,
(don’t say it is a small matter
to the man in jail
it is like a young limb broken off the tree).
It is bad to dream about the rose and the garden;
and good to think of the mountains and the seas
I would advise you,
to read and write without any rest,
to take up weaving,
and to cast mirrors.
So it is not impossible to spend
ten, fifteen years in a cell
or even more,
it can be done
Provided under your left breast
That precious gem
The jeweled heart stays bright.

YOUR HANDS AND THEIR LIES

Your hands, solemn like stones;

sad, like tunes sung in prison;
huge, massive, like draft animals;
your hands like the angry faces of hungry children.

Your hands, deft and industrious as bees,

heavy, like breasts full of milk,
valiant as nature,
your hands hiding their friendly softness under rough skins.

This world does not rest on oxen’s horns,

this world is carried by your hands.
And men, Oh my men!
they feed you on lies,
while you are starving
while what you need is meat and bread.
And without once eating at a white-clothed table
to your heart’s content you leave this world
and its fruit-laden trees.
Oh men, my men!
Especially those of Asia, of Africa,
of the Near East, the Middle East, the Pacific Islands,
and those of my country,
who are more than seventy per cent of humanity,
like your hands you are old and musing,
yet like them, curious, enthusiastic and young.
Oh men, my men!
My European, my American,
you are alert, you are daring,
yet forgetful like your hands,
and like your hands you are easy to dupe,
easy to deceive…

Oh men, my men,
if the antennas lie,
if the posters on the walls lie, and the ad in the paper,
if the printing presses lie,
if the bare legs of the girls lie on the white screen,
if the prayer lies,
if the dream lies,
if the lullaby lies,

if the tavern fiddler lies,

if after a hopeless day the moonlight lies at night,
f the words lie,
if the colors lie,
if the voices lie,
if all those who exploit the labor of your hands
and everything and everyone lies,
except your hands
it is to make them pliant like clay
blind as darkness,
stupid as shepherd dogs
and to keep them from revolting
and from bringing to an end
the money-grabber’s kingdom and his tyranny
over this transient though wonderful world
where we are for but so short a stay.

ANGINA PECTORIS
If the half of my heart is here, doctor,
The other half is in China
With the army going down towards the Yellow River.
And then every morning, doctor,
Every morning at dawn
My heart is shot in Greece.

And then when the prisoners fall asleep,

When the last steps go away from the infirmary
My heart goes off, doctor,
It goes off to a little wooden house, in Istanbul.
And then for ten years, doctor,
I have had nothing in my hands to offer my people,
Nothing else but an apple,
A red apple my heart.

I watch the night through the bars

And in spite of all these walls lying heavily on my chest
My heart beats with the most distant star.
It is on account of all that, doctor,
And not because of arterio-sclerosis,
Or nicotine or prison
That I have this angina pectoris.

ABOUT DEATH

Wont you sit down my friends,

welcome to you,
I know while I was asleep,
you came into my cell through the window,
you did not upset the medicine bottle with the long neck, -
nor the red pillbox.
Standing in front of my bed,
with a starlit face,
you are holding each other’s hands,
welcome to you my friends.

Isn’t that funny,

I thought you were dead.
And since I don’t believe in
heaven or hell, nor in God,
I was thinking: “Too bad,
I didn’t have a chance
to offer my friends even a cigarette.”

Isn’t that funny

I thought you were dead.
You came into my cell through the window,
won’t you sit down my friends,
welcome to you.

Why are you frowning at me,

Hashim son of Osman?
Isn’t that funny,
weren’t you dead, brother?
In the port of Istanbul
 loading coal on a foreign cargo,
didn’t you fall in a hold
with your basket full of coal?
The winch pulled out your corpse,
and before quitting time,
your red blood,
washed your black head.

Who knows how much you suffered?

Don’t stand please sit down;
I thought you were dead.
You came into my cell through the window,
with your starlit face,
welcome to you my friends.

Hello Yakup from Rocky village,

didn’t you die too?
Leaving to your children,
your malaria and starvation,
on a hot summer day,
weren’t you buried in the barren cemetery?
So you did not die.

And you,
Ahmet Jemil, the writer!
I saw with my own eyes,
your coffin lowered in the grave.
It even seemed to me,
that the coffin was a little too short.

Put this bottle down Ahmet Jemil!

You did not give up your bad habits;
this is medicine, not the raki bottle.
Just to make fifty cents a day,
and to forget this lonely world,
how much you used to drink.
I thought you were dead,
standing in front of my bed,
you are holding each other’s hands.
Won’t you sit down my friends,
welcome to you.

An old Persian poet says

Death is just,
it strikes with the same majesty,
 the Shah and the poor man.
Hashim,
Why are you so surprised?
Brother, haven’t you ever heard,
of a Shah carrying a basket of coal
and dying in a cargo-ship’s hold?

And old Persian poet says

Death is just.
Yakup, the apple of my eye,
how broadly you smiled.
You never smiled like this once
while you were alive;
but let me finish.
An old Persian poet says,
Death is just...
Leave that bottle Abmet Jemil,
your anger is vain.
I know for death to be just,
you say life should be just too.
An old Persian poet...
Friends why are you so angry,
why are you leaving me,
my friends where are you going?

PLEA
This country shaped like the head of a mare
Coming full gallop from far off Asia
To stretch into the Mediterranean
This country is ours.

Bloody wrists, clenched teeth

bare feet,
Land like a precious silk carpet
This hell, this paradise is ours.
Let the doors be shut that belong to others,
Let them never open again
Do away with the enslaving of man by man
This plea is ours
To live! Like a tree alone and free
Like a forest in brotherhood
This yearning is ours!
 THE FUNNIEST CREATURE

Like the scorpion, brother,

You are like the scorpion
In a night of horror.
Like the sparrow, brother,
You are like the sparrow
In his petty worries.
Like the mussel, brother,
You are like the mussel
Shut in and quiet.
You are dreadful, brother,
Like the mouth of a dead volcano.
And you are not one, alas!
You are not five
You are millions.
You are like the sheep, brother,
When the cattle-dealer, clad in your skin, lifts his stick
Right away you join the herd
Almost proud, you go running to the slaughter-house.
So you are the funniest creature
Funnier even than the fish
That lives in the sea yet does not know the sea.
And if there is so much tyranny on this earth
It’s thanks to you, brother,
If we are starved, worn out,
If we are skinned to the bones,
If we are crushed like grapes to yield our wine –
I can’t bring myself to say it’s all your fault,
But a lot of it is, brother.

1948

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

“Let’s fall asleep now

and wake up in a hundred years, my beloved. ...” J
NO
I am not a deserter,
Besides my century does not frighten me,
My wretched century,
Blushing from shame,
My courageous century,
great
and heroic.

I have never grieved I was born too soon

I am from the twentieth century
And I am proud of it
To be where I am, among our people is enough for me
And to fight for a new world....

“In a hundred years, my beloved....

No, earlier and in spite of everything -

My century dying and reborn
My century whose last days will be beautiful
My century will burst with sunlight, my beloved, like your eyes.

1948

TO PAUL ROBESON

They don’t let us sing our songs, Robeson,

Eagle singer, Negro brother,
They don’t want us to sing our songs.

They are scared, Robeson,

Scared of the dawn and of seeing
Scared of hearing and touching.
They are scared of loving
The way our Ferhat7 loved.
(Surely you too have a Ferhat, Robeson,
What is his name?)

They are scared of the seed, the earth

The running water and the memory of a friend’s hand
Asking no discount, no commission, no interest
A band which has never paused like a bird in their hands.

They are scared, Negro brother,

Our songs scare them, Robeson.

October 1949

THE ENEMIES

They are the enemies of the towel weaver Rejep from Bursa
the enemies of the fitter Hasan from the Karabuk factory.
They are the enemies of the poor peasant woman Matcheh
the enemies of the farmhand Suleyman.
They are your enemies, my enemies,
the enemies of every thinking man.
Our fatherland, which is the home of these people,
they are, my beloved, the enemies of our fatherland.

They are the enemies of hope, my beloved,

the enemies of the running water
of the fruit-laden tree,
of a growing and improving life.
For death has put its stamp upon their foreheads
- decaying teeth, rotten flesh –
They will tumble down and go away
never to come back again.
And surely, my beloved, surely,
in this beautiful country, Liberty
will walk around freely
will walk around in its most glorious outfit
in workingman’s overalls.

1948
 THE FIFTH DAY OF A HUNGER STRIKE

Brothers,
If I can’t tell you well
What I have to tell you
You will excuse me,
I am slightly dizzy, nearly drunk,
Not from raki
From hunger, just a little bit.

Brothers,
Those of Europe, of Asia, of America,
I am neither in jail nor on a hunger strike,
In this month of May, I am lying on a lawn at night,
Your eyes are close over my head, shining like stars,
Like the hand of my mother,
The hand of my beloved,
The hand of life.

Brothers,
You have never deserted me,
Neither me, nor my country, nor my people.
As much as I love yours
You love mine, I know it.
Thanks, brothers, thanks.

Brothers,
I don’t intend to die,
If I am murdered
I will go on living among you, I know:
I will live in Aragon’s poems
- In his lines telling about the beautiful days to come –
I will live in Picasso’s white dove,
I will live in Robeson’s songs
And above all,
And best of all,
I will live in the victorious laughter of my comrade
Among the dockers of Marseilles.

To tell you the truth, brothers,

I am happy, fully happy.

May 1950
 MORNING

I woke up.
Where are you?
In your own home.
You still can’t get used
To being in your own home when you wake up?
It is one of the odd consequences
Of staying in jail for 13 years.

Who is the one sleeping next to you?

It is not loneliness, but your wife
She is sleeping soundly like the angels.
Pregnancy becomes the woman.
What time is it?
Eight o’clock
You are safe until evening
Because it is not customary
for the police to raid a house during the day.

1951

THAT IS THE QUESTION

All the wealth of the earth cannot quench their thirst

They want to make a lot of money
You have to kill, you have to die
For them to make a lot of money.

No doubt they don’t admit it openly

They hang up colorful lanterns on the dry branches
They send running on the roads glittering lies
Their tails all covered with tinsel and spangles.

In the market-place they are beating the drums;

Under the tents, the tiger-man, the mermaid the headless-man,
The acrobats in pink shorts on the straight wire
All have heavily made-up faces.
To be duped or not to be duped
That is the question.
If you are not duped you will live
If you are duped you will not.

1951

EVENING STROLL

You are out of jail

And no sooner out
You made your wife pregnant
Offering her your ann
You are strolling, in the evening, around your neighborhood
Her belly comes up to her nose
Gracefully she carries her sacred load.
You are respectful and proud.
The air is cool
A coolness like the hands of a cold baby
You feel like taking them in your palms
and warming them.
The cats of the neighborhood are at the butcher’s door
On the top floor his curly wife
Her breasts on the window sill
watching the evening.
The half-lit sky is clear
Right in the middle lies the evening star
Like a glass of water, bright and shiny.
The Indian summer lasted long this year
Though the mulberry trees have turned yellow
The figs are still green.
Shahap the typographer, and the younger daughter of Yani the milkman
Have gone out for an evening walk
Their fingers clasped.
The grocer Karabet’s lights are on.
This Armenian citizen has not forgiven
The massacre of his father in the Kurdish mountains
But he loves you
Because you too did not forgive
Those who smeared this black stain on the forehead of the Turkish people.
The tuberculars of the neighborhood
The bedridden patients
Are looking through the window panes.
The son of the washerwoman Huriye
Sadness on his shoulders
Is going to the coffee house.
Rahnii Bey’s radio
is giving the news:
In a country in the Far East
People with yellow moon-shaped faces
Are fighting a white monster.
From your own people they sent there
4500 Mehmets
To kill their own brothers.
Your face is blushing
from anger and shame
And not just in general
A purely personal
a helpless sadness.
It feels as if they had pushed your wife from behind
rolled her on the ground
and she lost her baby;
Or as if you were in jail again
And they were forcing the peasant-gendarmes
To beat the peasants.

The night fell suddenly

The evening stroll is over
A police car turned into your street
Your wife whispered:
Is it to our house?

A SAD FREEDOM

You sell the care of your eyes, the sight of your hands
You knead the dough of all earthly goods
Without ever tasting a single bite.
With your great freedom you slave for others
With the freedom of turning into Croesus
Those who make your mother weep
You are free.

From the moment you are born they climb on your head
Their lie-mills grind endlessly throughout your life
With your great freedom, your finger pressed to your temple, you think
With the freedom of conscience
You are free.

Your hanging head seems severed from our neck

Your arms are dropping at your sides
With your great freedom you roam around
With the freedom of the jobless
You are free.

You love your country as your dearest friend

Some day they sell it, perhaps to America,
And you too, with your great freedom,
With the freedom of becoming an air base
You are free.

Wall Street grabs at your throat - their hands be cursed –

Some day they send you to Korea perhaps.
With your great freedom you fill a grave....
With the freedom of becoming the unknown soldier
You are free.

I must live, not as a mere tool, a number, a means,

I must live like a man, you say
With your great freedom they fasten your handcuffs
With the freedom to be jeered, to be jailed, or even to be hanged
You are free.

No iron curtain, no wooden curtain, no lace curtain in your life

No need for you to choose freedom
You are free.

This freedom is a sad thing under the stars.