Nazim Hikmet: On Living

Living is no laughing matter :
you must live with great seriousness
                           like 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 degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
                     your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory,
    in your white coat and safety glasses,
    you can die for people -
     even for people whose faces you have never seen,
     even though you know living
     is the most real, the most beautiful thing.

I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees -
and not for your children, either
but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
                     because living, I mean, weighs heavier.

More poetry from Nazim Hikmet

Comments

[Alex]

thanx for that, it's beautiful. Nazim was a great poet and writer

[ShineThePath]

I think it is time to put back the security on this site...lot of spam driving down conversation.

[JB]

Yeah, the spam has arrived.

Sorry about that... but conversation isn't dependent on spam or lack thereof, but regular posting.

I've been writing poetry for the last few weeks, not polemics. So I'll clean the site up shortly.

[Renegade Eye]

Very good work.

Comradely regards.

[JB]

Oh, that's not my poetry!

Nazim Hikmet is like a Turkish Neruda. Follow the link for more.

[V]

Beautiful poem

[The Thanks Faction]

More poetry!

[JB]

I recently finished the novel Snow, by the Turkish author Opham Pamuk of recent English-language litr'ary celebrity. Whatever else with the book, I've been writing poetry almost since I began reading. I haven't written poetry in many years. Take that as a recommendation, and here's a poem I can inflict by sole virtue that this is my blog and by way of thanks to the quiet endurance of Hikmet.

TO THE MOUNTAINS

go to the mountains
if you must
and to kitchens
clamoring
awake and hungry

Enough already
with rebels
hints and feint
forced joy Sisyphus
drunk on dreams

go to the mountains
if you must
drink wine with the old
who are not afraid
for you
or themselves
or even their own children's children

wildflowers and guns too
and men of purpose
and women too
who are not afraid

[fear is the mind-killer]

Trying to wade into the long thread on the hundred-year argument, this was a nice diversion. I'd never heard of Hikmet.