Nazim Hikmet Poems

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 You waste the attention of your eyes, 
the glittering labour of your hands, 
and knead the dough enough for dozens of loaves 
of which you'll taste not a morsel; 
you are free to slave for others-- 
you are free to make the rich richer. 

The moment you're born 
they plant around you 
mills that grind lies 
lies to last...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 Taut, thick fingers punch
the teeth of my typewriter.
Three words are down on paper
 in capitals:
SPRING
 SPRING
 SPRING...
And me -- poet, proofreader,
the man who's forced to read
two thousand bad lines
 every day
 for two liras--
why,
 since spring
 has come, am I
 still sitting here
 like a ragged 
 black chair?
My head puts on its cap by itself,
 I fly out...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 I have no silver-saddled horse to ride,
no inheritance to live on,
neither riches no real-estate --
a pot of honey is all I own.
A pot of honey
 red as fire!

My honey is my everything.
I guard
my riches and my real-estate
-- my honey pot, I mean --
from pests of every species,
Brother, just wait...
As long as I've got
honey in my pot,
bees will come to...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 I was born in 1902
I never once went back to my birthplace
I don't like to turn back
at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo
at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University
at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest
and I've been a poet since I was fourteen
some people know all about plants some...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 Oh, both my shoes are shiny new,
And pristine is my hat;
My dress is 1922....
My life is all like that....Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 The knight of immortal youth
at the age of fifty found his mind in his heart
and on July morning went out to capture
the right, the beautiful, the just.

Facing him a world of silly and arrogant giants,
he on his sad but brave Rocinante.
I know what it means to be longing for something,
but if your heart weighs only a pound and sixteen...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 to the memory of my friend SI-YA-U,
 whose head was cut off in Shanghai

A CLAIM

Renowned Leonardo's
world-famous
"La Gioconda"
has disappeared.
And in the space
vacated by the fugitive
a copy has been placed.

The poet inscribing
the present treatise
knows more than a little
about the fate
of the real Gioconda.
She fell in love
with a seductive
graceful youth:
a honey-tongued
almond-eyed Chinese
named SI-YA-U.
Gioconda ran off
after her lover;
Gioconda was burned 
in a Chinese...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 The hair falling on your forehead
 suddenly lifted.
Suddenly something stirred on the ground.
The trees are whispering
 in the dark.
Your bare arms will be cold.

Far off
 where we can't see,
 the moon must be rising.
It hasn't reached us yet,
 slipping through the leaves
 to light up your shoulder.
But I know
 a wind comes up with the moon.
The trees are whispering.
Your...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 I stand in the advancing light,
my hands hungry, the world beautiful.

My eyes can't get enough of the trees--
they're so hopeful, so green.

A sunny road runs through the mulberries,
I'm at the window of the prison infirmary.

I can't smell the medicines--
carnations must be blooming nearby.

It's this way:
being captured is beside the point,
the point is not to surrender....Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 Comrades, if I don't live to see the day
-- I mean,if I die before freedom comes --
take me away
and bury me in a village cemetery in Anatolia.

The worker Osman whom Hassan Bey ordered shot
can lie on one side of me, and on the other side
the martyr Aysha, who gave birth in the rye
and died inside of forty days.

Tractors and...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 11-11-1933
 Bursa Prison
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 century
 grief lasts
 at most a year.

Death--
a body swinging from a...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 1
I carved your name on my watchband
with my fingernail.
Where I am, you know,
I don't have a pearl-handled jackknife
(they won't give me anything sharp)
 or a plane tree with its head in the clouds.
Trees may grow in the yard,
but I'm not allowed
 to see the sky overhead...
How many others are in this place?
I don't know.
I'm alone far from them,
they're all...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 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...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 as a child he never plucked the wings off flies
he didn't tie tin cans to cats' tails
or lock beetles in matchboxes
or stomp anthills
he grew up
and all those things were done to him
I was at his bedside when he died
he said read me a poem
about the sun and the sea
about nuclear reactors and satellites
about the greatness of humanity...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 Our eyes
 are limpid
 drops of water.
In each drop exists
 a tiny sign
 of our genius
which has given life to cold iron.
Our eyes
 are limpid
 drops of water
merged absolutely in the Ocean
that you could hardly recognize
 the drop in a block of ice
 in a boiling pan.
The masterpiece of these eyes
 the fulfillment of their genius
 the living iron.
In...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's
of my heart one by one
like the blood-red beads
of a ruby rosary strung
 on strands of golden hair!

But my
poetry's muse
takes to the air
on wings made of steel
like the I-beams
 of my suspension bridges!

I don't pretend
 the nightingale's lament
to the rose isn't easy on the ears...
But the language
 that really speaks to me
are Beethoven sonatas...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 If instead of being hanged by the neck
 you're thrown inside
 for not giving up hope
in the world, your country, your 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...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 You're like a scorpion, my brother,
you live in cowardly darkness
 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...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train 
night is falling
I never knew I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain 
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it 
I've never worked the earth
it must be my...Read more of this...

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by Hikmet, Nazim

 Today is Sunday. 
For the first time they took me out into the sun today. 
And for the first time in my life I was aghast 
that the sky is so far away 
and so blue 
and so vast 
I stood there without a motion. 
Then I sat on the ground with respectful devotion 
leaning against the white wall....Read more of this...

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