Forget the ideologies,taste the poem:

The Blue-Eyed Giant, the Miniature
Woman and the Honeysuckle


He was a blue-eyed giant,
He loved a miniature woman.
The woman's dream was of a miniature house
with a garden where honeysuckle grows
in a riot of colours
that sort of house.

The giant loved like a giant,
and his hands were used to such big things
that the giant could not
make the building,
could not knock on the door
of the garden where the honeysuckle grows
in a riot of colours
at that house.

He was a blue-eyed giant,
he loved a miniature woman,
a mini miniature woman.
The woman was hungry for comfort
and tired of the giant's long strides.
And bye bye off she went to the embraces of a rich dwarf
with a garden where the honeysuckle grows
in a riot of colours
that sort of house.

Now the blue-eyed giant realizes,
a giant isn't even a graveyard for love:
in the garden where the honeysuckle grows
in a riot of colours
that sort of house...


NAZIM HIKMET RAN

( Richard McKane )

yasamak

Yasamak bir agac gibi,
tek ve hür,
Ve bir orman gibi
kardescesine,
Bu
bizim Hasretimiz!


Nazim Hikmet

His friend Pablo Neruda relates Hikmet's account of how he was treated after his arrest: ``Accused of attempting to incite the Turkish navy into rebellion, Nazim was condemned to the punishments of hell. The trial was held on a warship. He told me he was forced to walk on the ship's bridge until he was too weak to stay on his feet, then they stuck him into a section of the latrines where the excrement rose half a meter above the floor. My brother poet felt his strength failing him: my tormentors are keeping an eye on me, they want to watch me suffer. His strength came back with pride. He began to sing, low at first, then louder, and finally at the top of his lungs. He sang all the songs, all the love poems he could remeber, his own poems, the ballads of the peasants, the people's battle hymns. He sang everything he knew. Ans so he vanquished the filth and his torturers.*'' In prison, Hikmet's Futurist-inspired, often topical early poetry gave way to poems with a more direct manner and a more serious tone. Enclosed in letters to his family and friends, these poems were subsequently circulated in manuscript. He not only composed some of his greatest lyrics in prison, but produced, between 1941 and 1945, his epic masterpiece, Human Landscapes. He also learned such crafts as weaving and woodworking in order to support himself and his family. In the late Forties, while still in prison, he divorced his second wife and married for a third time. In 1949 an international committee, including Pablo Picasso, Paul Robeson, and Jean Paul Sartre, was formed in Paris to campaign for Hikmet's release, and in 1950 he was awarded the World Peace Prize. The same year, he went on an eighteen-day hunger strike, despite a recent heart attack, and when Turkey's first democratically elected government came to power, he was released in a general amnesty.

Within a year, however, his persecution had resumed full force. Simone de Beauvoir recalls him describing the events of that time: ``He told me how a year after he came out of prison there were two attempts to murder him (with cars, in the narrow streets of Istanbul) And then they tried to make him do the military service on the Russian frontier: he was fifty. The doctor, a major, said to him: ``Half an hour standing in the sun and you're a dead man. But I shall give you a certificate of health.'' So then he escaped, across the Bosphorus in a tiny motorboat on a stormy night -when it was calm the straits were too well guarded. He wanted to reach Bulgaria, but it was impossible with a high sea running. He passed a Rumanian cargo ship, he began to circle it, shouting his name. They saluted him, they waived handkerchiefs, but they didn't stop. He followed them and went on circling them in the height of the storm; after two hours they stopped, but without picking him up. His motor stalled, he thought he was done for. At last they hauled him aboard; they had been telephoning to Bucharest for instructions. Exhausted, half dead, he staggered into the officers' cabin; there was an enormous photograph of him with the caption: SAVE NAZIM HIKMET. The most ironical part, he added, was that he had already been at liberty for a year.**''

I love this, too.
Even these lines symbolize communist ideology,I like them.
I think the important thing is picking up the beauties in each ideology,religion,culture and belief,and then creating your own ideology.

Bugun Pazar

Bugun beni ilk defa günese cikardilar.
Ve ben ömrumde ilk defa gökyüzünün
bu kadar benden uzak
bu kadar mavi
bu kadar genis olduguna sasarak
kimildamadan durdum.

Sonra saygiyla topraga oturdum,
dayadim sirtimi duvara.
Bu anda ne düsmek dalgalara,
bu anda ne kavga, ne hürriyet, ne karim.

Toprak,gunes ve ben... Bahtiyarim...

NAZIM HIKMET
----------------------------------------------------

NAZIM HIKMET, 24 Eylul 1945

En guzel deniz:
henuz gidilmemis olanidir...
En guzel cocuk:
henuz buyumedi.
En guzel gunlerimiz:
henuz yasamadiklarimiz.
Ve sana soylemek istedigim en guzel soz:
henuz soylememis oldugum sozdur...

Nazim Hikmet

I always wish I was born before, so that I could have been among the first to translate Nazim Hikmets beautiful poetry..

Well said, Aenigma!!!!