Autobiography by Nazim Hikmet

Autobiography

I was born in 1902

I never once went back to my birthplace

I don't like to turn back

at three I served as a pasha's grandson in Aleppo

at nineteen as a student at Moscow Communist University

at forty-nine I was back in Moscow as the Tcheka Party's guest

and I've been a poet since I was fourteen

some people know all about plants some about fish

I know separation

some people know the names of the stars by heart

I recite absences

I've slept in prisons and in grand hotels

I've known hunger even a hunger strike and there's almost no food

I haven't tasted

at thirty they wanted to hang me

at forty-eight to give me the Peace Prize

which they did

at thirty-six I covered four square meters of concrete in half a year

at fifty-nine I flew from Prague to Havana in eighteen hours

I never saw Lenin I stood watch at his coffin in '24

in '61 the tomb I visit is his books

they tried to tear me away from my party

it didn't work

nor was I crushed under the falling idols

in '51 I sailed with a young friend into the teeth of death

in '52 I spent four months flat on my back with a broken heart

waiting to die

I was jealous of the women I loved

I didn't envy Charlie Chaplin one bit

I deceived my women

I never talked my friends' backs

I drank but not every day

I earned my bread money honestly what happiness

out of embarrassment for others I lied

I lied so as not to hurt someone else

but I also lied for no reason at all

I've ridden in trains planes and cars

most people don't get the chance

I went to opera

most people haven't even heard of the opera

and since '21 I haven't gone to the places most people visit

mosques churches temples synagogues sorcerers

but I've had my coffee grounds read

my writings are published in thirty or forty languages

in my Turkey in my Turkish they're banned

cancer hasn't caught up with me yet

and nothing says it will

I'll never be a prime minister or anything like that

and I wouldn't want such a life

nor did I go to war

or burrow in bomb shelters in the bottom of the night

and I never had to take to the road under diving planes

but I fell in love at almost sixty

in short comrades

even if today in Berlin I'm croaking of grief

I can say I've lived like a human being

and who knows

how much longer I'll live

what else will happen to me

This autobiography was written 

in east Berlin on 11 September 1961 

(Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk)

Love Poem with Tumor and Petrified Dog by Kaveh Akbar

Love Poem with Tumor and Petrified Dog

There is a tumor in my sacroiliac joint 

and snowflakes in my coffee. 

I’m in Iowa with the cats

and you’re in Pompeii.

You send a video: lizards rushing into limestone

which remind you of being a kid in Florida. 

In Florida we memorized sonnets

while leaping around green anoles. 

I’ve forgotten the poems. 

Your black tights, even in that heat. 

Mostly that’s what I remember.

It’s okay to say it straight. 

Like: I’m scared, still,

that I might be dying. 

Pomegranates growing from Pompeiian ash, 

scandalizing propriety—

you send a picture and I do not say,

It just looks like a tree

or Another of God’s secrets 

wasted on me. 

Which part of the mind 

gets you to the soul?

I am reading St. John of the Cross,

a character you might’ve put in a poem:

In the evening of life,

we will be judged on love alone. 

Some petrified dog. Table bread,

a painted doorway. 

You’ve been with me forever.

You know all my angels.

How could I say no to you, 

taking off your earrings to kiss me?