I knock and yet remain unseenFor I am dead for I am deadI’m only seven though I diedIn Hiroshima long agoI’m seven now as I was thenWhen children die they do not growMy hair was scorched by swirling flameMy eyes grew dim my eyes grew blindDeath came and turned my bones to dustAnd that was…
My one and only!Your last letter says:‘My head is throbbing,my heart is stunned!’You say:‘If they hang you,if I lose you,I’ll die!’You’ll live, my dear–my memory will vanish like black smoke in the wind.Of course you’ll live, red-haired lady of my heart:in the twentieth centurygrief lastsat most a year.Death–a body swinging from a rope.My heartcan’t accept…
I finally made it to your city,but I was late, Samet,we couldn’t get together:I was late by the space of death.I didn’t want to hear your voiceon tape, samet —I can’t look at pictures of the deadwithout totally dying.But the day will comewhen I’ll totally separate you from yourself, Samet.You’ll enter the world of respectable…
like a scorpion.You’re like a sparrow, my brother,always in a sparrow’s flutter.You’re like a clam, my brother,closed like a clam, content,And you’re frightening, my brother,like the mouth of an extinct volcano.Not one,not five–unfortunately, you number millions.You’re like a sheep, my brother:when the cloaked drover raises his stick,you quickly join the flockand run, almost proudly, to…
night is fallingI never knew I likednight descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plainI don’t likecomparing nightfall to a tired birdI didn’t know I loved the earthcan someone who hasn’t worked the earth love itI’ve never worked the earthit must be my only Platonic loveand here I’ve loved rivers all this timewhether…
He was a blue-eyed giant,He loved a miniature woman.The woman’s dream was of a miniature housewith a garden where honeysuckle growsin a riot of coloursthat sort of house.The giant loved like a giant,and his hands were used to such big thingsthat the giant could notmake the building,could not knock on the doorof the garden where…
You are my countryYou are the green silks in hazel eyesYou are big, beautiful and triumphantAnd you are my sorrow that isn’t feltthe more I feel it.
you must live with great seriousnesslike a squirrel, for example–I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,I mean living must be your whole occupation.Living is no laughing matter:you must take it seriously,so much so and to such a degreethat, for example, your hands tied behind your back,your back to the wall,or else in…
an old walnut, knot by knot, shred by shredNeither you are aware of this, nor the policeI am a walnut tree in Gulhane ParkMy leaves are nimble, nimble like fish in waterMy leaves are sheer, sheer like a silk handkerchiefpick, wipe, my rose, the tear from your eyesMy leaves are my hands, I have one…
A CLAIMRenowned Leonardo’sworld-famous‘La Gioconda’has disappeared.And in the spacevacated by the fugitivea copy has been placed.The poet inscribingthe present treatiseknows more than a littleabout the fateof the real Gioconda.She fell in lovewith a seductivegraceful youth:a honey-tonguedalmond-eyed Chinesenamed SI-YA-U.Gioconda ran offafter her lover;Gioconda was burnedin a Chinese city.I, Nazim Hikmet,authorityon this matter,thumbing my nose at friend and…
