'seed of light'

A strange feeling
Nazim Hikmet

"The plum trees
---------------are in bloom
- the wild apricot flowers first,
-----------------------------the plum last...

My love,
let's sit
knee to knee
on the grass.
The air is delicious and light
- but not really warm yet -
and the almonds are green
-------------------and fuzzy, still
----------------------------very soft...

We're happy
------------because we're alive.
We'd probably have been killed long ago
if you were in London,
if I were in Tobruk or on an English freighter...

Put your hands on your knees, my love
- your wrists thick and white -
and open your left hand:
the daylight is inside your palm
--------------------like an apricot...
Of the people dead in yesterday's air raid,
----------------------about a hundred were under fire,
twenty-four still babies...

I like the color of pomegranate seeds, my love
- a pomegranate seed, seed of light -
I like melons fragant,
my plums tart..."

...a rainy day
far from fruits and you
- not a single tree has bloomed yet,
and there's even a chance of snow -
in Bursa prison,
carried away by a strange feeling
and about to explode,
I write this out of pigheadedness
- out of sheer spite - for myself and the people I love.

(1941)

- -

"Once that's done, you're all set. Free to roam the Open Library, discovering treasures, making connections, correcting errors, or sprinkling tidbits you know about books across the catalog. Naturally, you're also welcome to simply explore. Apart from over 20 million bibliographic records, we also have over 1 million free, readable books available for you to read, right now."
e assim se adere à openlibrary.org, um milhão de livros que se podem ler entre os quais este livro de poemas seleccionados de Nazim Hikmet que procuro há tanto tempo. este poema em particular faz parte dos poemas escolhidos escritos na prisão. a viagem istambulita alargou o universo da minha própria ignorância, em expansão sem big bang e sem limites.

e não será tão clara a corrente subterrânea que corre sob Pamuk, Cavafy, Dostoyevsky, undertow:

The City
C.P. Cavafy

You said: “I’ll go to another country, go to another shore,
find another city better than this one.
Whatever I try to do is fated to turn out wrong
and my heart lies buried as though it were something dead.
How long can I let my mind moulder in this place?
Wherever I turn, wherever I happen to look,
I see the black ruins of my life, here,
where I’ve spent so many years, wasted them, destroyed them totally.”

You won’t find a new country, won’t find another shore.
This city will always pursue you. You will walk
the same streets, grow old in the same neighborhoods,
will turn gray in these same houses.
You will always end up in this city. Don’t hope for things elsewhere:
there is no ship for you, there is no road.
As you’ve wasted your life here, in this small corner,
you’ve destroyed it everywhere else in the world.

- -
a definição e a história de 'nacionalismo' levam-no para campos de exclusão: estes três autores dão nova vista ao apego à sua própria origem: a cidade, a língua. (tu serás sempre a tua cidade, para onde quer que vás)-

(chego a conclusões: hoje como antes, os livros legíveis - os que interessa ler - são uma pequena percentagem de todos os livros, nada mudou nesse aspecto)