If instead of being hanged by the neck
you’re thrown inside
for not giving up hope
in the world, your country, and people,
if you do ten or fifteen years
apart from the time you have left,
you won’t say,
“Better I had swung from the end of a rope
like a flag”—
you’ll put your foot down and live.
It may not be a pleasure exactly,
but it’s your solemn duty
to live one more day
to spite the enemy.
Part of you may live alone inside,
like a stone at the bottom of a well.
But the other part
must be so caught up
in the flurry of the world
that you shiver there inside
when outside, at forty days’ distance, a leaf moves.
To wait for letters inside,
to sing sad songs,
or to lie awake all night staring at the ceiling
is sweet but dangerous.
Look at your face from shave to shave,
forget your age,
watch out for lice
and for spring nights,
and always remember
to eat every last piece of bread—
also, don’t forget to laugh heartily.
And who knows,
the woman you love may stop loving you.
Don’t say it’s no big thing:
it’s like the snapping of a green branch
to the man inside.
To think of roses and gardens inside is bad,
to think of seas and mountains is good.
Read and write without rest,
and I also advise weaving
and making mirrors.
I mean, it’s not that you can’t pass
ten or fifteen years inside
and more—
you can,
as long as the jewel
on the left side of your chest doesn’t lose its luster!
From Poems of Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk, published by Persea Books. Copyright © 1994 by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. Used with the permission of Persea Books. All rights reserved.
I dreamed a pronouncement
about poetry and peace.
“People are violent,”
I said through the megaphone
on the quintessentially
frigid Saturday
to the rabble stretching
all the way up First.
“People do violence
unto each other
and unto the earth
and unto its creatures.
Poetry,” I shouted, “Poetry,”
I screamed, “Poetry
changes none of that
by what it says
or how it says, none.
But a poem is a living thing
made by living creatures
(live voice in a small box)
and as life
it is all that can stand
up to violence.”
I put down the megaphone.
The first clap I heard
was my father’s,
then another, then more,
wishing for the same thing
in different vestments.
I never thought, why me?
I had spoken a truth
offered up by ancestral dreams
and my father understood
my declaration
as I understood the mighty man
still caught in the vapor
between this world and that
when he said, “The true intellectual
speaks truth to power.”
If I understand my father
as artist, I am free,
said my friend, of the acts
of her difficult father.
So often it comes down
to the father, his showbiz,
while the mother’s hand
shapes us, beckons us
to ethics, slaps our faces
when we err, soothes
the sting, smoothes the earth
we trample daily, in light
and in dreams. Rally
all your strength, rally
what mother and father
together have made:
us on this planet,
erecting, destroying.
From Crave Radiance: New and Selected Poems 1990-2010 (Graywolf Press, 2010). Copyright © 2010 by Elizabeth Alexander. Used with the permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Graywolf Press.