On Living
Nazim Hikmet
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'' ...
February, 1948
Trans. Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk