Regarding Art
Sometimes,
I, too, tell the ah'sof my heart one by onelike the blood-red beadsof a ruby rosary strung on strands of golden hair!
But mypoetry's musetakes to the airon wings made of steellike the I-beams of my suspension bridges!
I don't pretend the nightingale's lamentto the rose isn't easy on the ears…But the language that really speaks to meare Beethoven sonatas playedon copper, iron, wood, bone, and catgut…You can "have"galloping offin a cloud of dust!
Me,
I wouldn't tradefor the purest-bred Arabian steedthe sixth mph of my iron horse running on iron tracks!
Sometimes my eye is caught like a big dumb flyby the masterly spider webs in the corners of my room.
But I really look upto the seventy-seven-story, reinforced-concrete mountains my blue-shirted builders create!
Were I to meetthe male beauty"young Adonis, god of Byblos,"on a bridge,
I'd probably never notice;but I can't help staring into my philosopher's glassy eyesor my fireman's square face red as a sweating sun!
Though I can smokethird-class cigarettes filledon my electric workbenches,
I can't roll tobacco - even the finest-in paper by hand and smoke it!
I didn't — "wouldn't" — trademy wife dressed in her leather cap and jacketfor Eve's nakedness!
Maybe I don't have a "poetic soul"?
What can I do when I love my own children more than mother Nature's! Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)
Nazim Hikmet
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