Things I Didn't Know I Loved / Nâzım Hikmet

(...)

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 only Platonic love

and here I've loved rivers all this time

whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills

(...)

I know you can't wash in the same river even once

I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see

I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly as long as a crow

I know this has troubled people before

and will trouble those after me

I know all this has been said a thousand times before

and will be said after me

I didn't know I loved the sky

cloudy or clear

(...)

I hear voices

not from the blue vault but from the yard

I never knew I loved roads

even the asphalt kind

(...)

Ramazan night

a paper lantern leading the way

maybe nothing like this ever happened

maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy

going to the shadow play

(...)

I never knew I loved the sun

even when setting cherry-red as now

in Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors

but you aren't about to paint it that way

(...)

I didn't know I loved clouds

whether I'm under or up above them

whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts

(...)

I didn't know I liked rain

whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass my

heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped inside a drop

and takes off for uncharted countries I didn't know I loved

rain

Fragmenty wiersza, tłumaczenie Randy Blasing i Mutlu Konuk
Zdjęcia jak zwykle mojego autorstwa :)

Nâzım Hikmet (1901-1963) – turecki poeta o polskich korzeniach, dramaturg i komunista, jeden z najbardziej znanych poza granicami swojego kraju tureckich pisarzy.