To Nazim Hikmet at 60
This longish, 8-part poem is an old one I wrote during the time I lived in Cambridge, MA. I wrote it response to finding Nazim Hikmet's poem "Things I didn't know I Loved", which I ran across in Carolyn Forche's edited volume, Against Forgetting. Hikmet and this poem have been coming into my mind a lot lately (and especially over the past few weeks since November 9), and thought I'd share it again.
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To Nazim Hikmet at 60
1. I've fallen in love again
All at once. A new storm.
This time with the rise and fall of the words and breath of Nazim Hikmet.
Things I didn't know I loved—
a wild ocean found just the other night hidden in a book on the shelf covered in the too-thick dust of had been forgotten for how long now?
The things I didn’t know I loved.
Written on the Prague-Berlin train in 1962.
He was 60 then and on the train.
Look at the way he sits by the window watching
the rivers hills sky grass
his life
smoking
his 6th cigarette and loving 60 then and finding himself in wild love again suddenly
with clouds bearded and soft rain sometimes harsh, sometimes like nets and raging seas bright stars unexpected flowers steady snow
in love with asphalt too he writes remembering an everyday road driven once with a woman named Vera (I am watching as he takes her hand)
yes, in love with plain hard asphalt each time he travels to that day to the water cool in the jar between them to the sunlight through the windshield illuminating the dashboard to the hairs on his arms, loving a regular life danced in tandem as they ride together through an afternoon
the two of them laughing in their car alone in their box outside of the world through an ordinary human life
a life (he writes) that beats as
… slightly longer than a horse
but not nearly as long as a crow ...
… slightly longer than a horse
but not nearly as long as a crow ...
this breath we have this time.
2. I need to tell you: I have fallen in love again
because it’s to you I send this poem
to you I speak of falling in love with a Turkish poet who writes of carnations 1 2 3 red bursting open the memory of three flowers brought in care by friends as he lived another day out of nearly 17 years in prison.
I touch the stems green between his thumb and fingers. Hold his hand lifting rag-petaled fragrance to his nose. Watch him fan them on his pillow that night before he sleeps.
After such a day it becomes easy to love carnations.
3. I am in love with a man named Nazim Hikmet who reminds me
that just last week I wrote a crow flying wrote wings a black blur flying straight into the clouds fast up out of a tree.
An ordinary detail that random crow traced moving wild through frigid sky through the strange, still light of soon it will snow yellow.
(Can you see it?
smell it?
feel the strength of that frosty silence?)
I want you to know:
that was love too.
4. And I need to tell you:
I was in love again tonight and you were there
tucked away, beating in that place small and crimson beneath my ribs as I stood on the too-often-late Green Line train.
And all the way from Packard Square to Government Center then Government Center to Lechmere I saw reflections of reflections of endless bodies crowded and thought of you
and him.
At least six bodies deep across the aisle we were and I wondered if here: tired caught bound in tangles of after-work exhaustion it was too easy to forget the heat of being flesh.
And if it was,what could I do to open myself, my eyes, once again, to that place?
so as not to miss a moment or the depth of each pulse and heartbeat alive and vibrating at once embodied, wrapped up together and distinct and together in that car?
How much desire and love in that temporary place the Green Line?
That train time I know as downtime, no time, and in-between nowhere time?
How much desire and love in that place the Green Line Friday Night when there was barely enough room to stand let alone to sit?
And if we are a web, I thought where would my words begin?
Would I start with the woman with the silver hair whose body sways in sync with the train? Or with the woman with the brown-gold eyes who pats her hands on her thighs telling her lover in gestures instead of words that if you are tired of all the standing you can sit on my lap if you want?
If you too are tired—remember—here is a place for you to rest.
5. On the Green Line to Lechmere I was touched by a stranger.
By the invisibility of a stranger’s hands.
6. Yes, it seems, I have fallen in love again.
With all those strangers I’ll never know and the words of a Turkish Poet who says “LOOK!” every time I turn the page to those things he didn’t know he loved.
And I am in love again with memory.
With the Boston skyline a palimpsested window becoming city over bodies over river over bodies over city.
Because on the Green Line Friday Night I stood tired in the midst of who? and in the midst of being in love with a 1962 train ride inscribed by a man I'll never know who watched his life and suddenly saw.
7. Yes, it is true; I have fallen in love
with the words and breath of Nazim Hikmet.
Nazim Hikmet who reminds me.
Nazim Hikmet who writes
about being in love at 60.
And tonight as I sit once again smoking and noticing the sky
I will have my 6th cigarette and remember.
Remember the things I love and him.
Know the things I love and you.
As I exhale and watch my smoke become body become arms become need through the miles all the way to you,
because it’s to you I offer this poem,
to you I want to sing his words to life,
to you I send a laughing couple on an asphalt road.
8. And if you were here I would ask: How is it possible to not fall in love with this world—
with its poetry its music its unexpected wings
and
its always renewed desire?
