Just past the middle of our two-week Turkey tour, we had a day “at leisure” in Antalya, on the Mediterranean Sea. In the morning, H. and I wandered around Old Town, an area of charming narrow streets, ruins, cafes and shops which we entered via Hadrian’s Gate. We came upon a monument–to a Turkish poet. An odd-looking thing, a scroll of words tumbling downward, as I recall, and in relief, a face behind bars. (The photo I took of it seems to have disappeared, though here’s the one I took of the English inscription so I could look him up later.) 

Nazim Hikmet. Never heard of him, but a quick search yielded some poems online. And oh oh oh! I read his “On Living” and “Things I Didn’t Know I Loved” and “Some Advice to Those Who Will Serve Time in Prison” and it was like a space inside me opened up and joy rushed in. Sometimes something like a poem or two or three will come your way, and it marks a day, or even an entire two weeks of holidays. It stays with you. Once home, I was delighted to find a book of his selected poems in the library, which I’ve enjoyed too.

Below, Nazim Hikmet’s “On Living” as translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. (And if you like it, there’s more of his work at PoemHunter.com.)

I

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’ve 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.
II

Let’s say you’re seriously ill, need surgery–
which is to say we might not get
from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast …
Let’s say we’re at the front–
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We’ll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind–
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.
III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet–
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space …
You must grieve for this right now
–you have to feel this sorrow now–
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived” …