On Living, By Nazim Hikmet

kstrel:

I keep thinking about Hikmet lately, maybe because he was a political prisoner, and most of my work now revolves around Bradley Manning.  Hikmet spent most of his adult life in and out of prison in Turkey, for being just a little too political for poet.  Pablo Neruda and many others had been campaigning for his release.  He eventually escaped to exile, but didn’t live much longer.  He was the heart and soul of Turkey at the time.     Look him up.

—————

Living is no laughing matter:
you must live with great seriousness
like a squirrel, for example—
I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
I mean living must be your whole occupation.
Living is no laughing matter:
you must take it seriously,
so much so and to such a degree
that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
your back to the wall,
or else in a laboratory
in your white coat and safety glasses,
you can die for people—
even for people whose faces you’ve never seen,
even though you know living
is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
I mean, you must take living so seriously
that even at seventy, for example, you’ll plant olive trees—
and not for your children, either,
but because although you fear death you don’t believe it,
because living, I mean, weighs heavier.


II

Let’s say you’re seriously ill, need surgery—
which is to say we might not get
from the white table.
Even though it’s impossible not to feel sad
about going a little too soon,
we’ll still laugh at the jokes being told,
we’ll look out the window to see it’s raining,
or still wait anxiously
for the latest newscast …
Let’s say we’re at the front—
for something worth fighting for, say.
There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
we might fall on our face, dead.
We’ll know this with a curious anger,
but we’ll still worry ourselves to death
about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
Let’s say we’re in prison
and close to fifty,
and we have eighteen more years, say,
before the iron doors will open.
We’ll still live with the outside,
with its people and animals, struggle and wind—
I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
I mean, however and wherever we are,
we must live as if we will never die.


III

This earth will grow cold,
a star among stars
and one of the smallest,
a gilded mote on blue velvet—
I mean this, our great earth.
This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space …
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived” …

Trans. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk (1993)

At times like these, when things are at their most surreal -

Friendship

Look – it is snowing and Bradley Manning is alone.
I wonder if he was secretly watching over us,
and now that he’s locked up and away, we’re just drifting in space.
It feels good to keep secrets, even better
when someone cares enough to write those secrets down.
At times like these – when things are at their most surreal –
I think of how Manning was left alone by Julian Assange,
by all of us, like we’re just beautiful white-haired spirits
flitting from couch to couch, throwing secrets like salt.

by Monica Wendel

Cento (from the 2009-07-16 Cable from Karl Eikenberg)

flapjacksal:

I was able to refocus the conversation

as we discussed commitment to continuing our close partnership

I outlined what the I seeking from the relationship:

meaningful progress, security, sanctuary, investment.

Karzai agreed there had been a dramatic reduction in efforts.

I welcomed such a statement, noting a recent engagement.

It was clear even at that time, trouble was brewing.

I took issue with a rather weak comment on relations,

pointed out this did not accurately reflect our robust partnership.

Five years down the road, I said, success would be defined by

villagers who would shout, “Good Morning, Sergeant Thompson,”

as in the “Golden Age” of the relationship.

InDigest Wants You to Write a Cento Based on the Wikileak Cables!

Friends, whistle-blowers, readers, bloggers, drunkards, past contributors to InDigest,

Whether or not you think Wikileaks has further endangered fragile U.S. diplomatic relations around the world, whether or not you believe Julian Assange sexually assaulted two women in Sweden, whether or not you think Amazon’s refusal to continuing hosting wikileaks is gutless and cowardly, whether or not you think Mastercard, Visa, and Paypal blocking funding to Wikileaks is similarly gutless and cowardly: let’s write some centos!

That’s right, centos! InDigest wants you to write centos based on the Wikileaks cables to be included at the InDigest blog and a broadside anthology that will appear in the next issue of InDigest (and maybe elsewhere for a future project from InDigest as well). We’ve already got a bunch of these and they are going so well that we wanted to open this up to anyone.

Check out the already massive load of leaked diplomatic cables here, write a cento and send it over. (Wikileaks has been having to bounce around different servers, let us know if you’re having trouble tracking them down.) If you have friends whose writing you enjoy, tell them about it. The more the merrier, there’s certainly enough material. We’ll be posting them on the blog as they come in, publishing broadsides in the next issue and throwing reading parties in both New York and Minneapolis in January.

To submit:
Send them here: indigestsubmit@gmail.com
Subject line: wiki centos
Deadline: rolling, but we’re wrapping it all up by December 30.

Happy writing.