Selected Poems of Nâzým Hikmet



LETTER TO MY WIFE

                                                                   33 - 11 - 11
                                                                       Bursa 
                                                                      Prison

My only one!
In your last letter
"My head aches
               my heart is stunned!"
                                   you say.
"If they hang you,
               if I lose you;"
                                   you say;
                                          "I can't live!"
You'll live my dearest wife,
like a black smoke in the wind my memory will vanish;
you'll live, the red-haired sister of my heart
at most one year it lasts
                      in the twentieth century
                                                the grief of death..
Death
a dead body swinging on a rope.
My heart doesn't accept
                              such a death..
But
be sure that, my love,
if some pitiable gypsy's
                 hairy black spider like hand
                                            slips the rope
                                    around my neck,
to see the fear in my blue eyes
                                    they'll look in vain
                                                            at Nâzým!

And I,
in the twilight of my last morning,
shall see my friends and you,
and carry only the grief
of an unfinished song
                           to the soil...
My wife!
Good hearted,
golden coloured,
with eyes sweeter than honey, my bee;
why did I write you
                        that they want to hang me,
the trial is in the first step
and they don't pluck like a turnip
                                 the head of a man.
Come, forget them all.
These are so far away probabilities.
If you have some money
                      buy me a flannel underwear,
my sciatica is acting up.
And don't forget that always
there should be good thoughts in the mind
                                                    of a prisoner's wife.

                         tr. by Fuat Engin