Hymn To Life – by Nazim Hikmet

The hair falling on your forehead
suddenly lifted.
Suddenly something stirred on the ground
The trees are whispering
in the dark
Your bare arms will be cold

Far off
where we can’t see
the moon must be rising
It hasn’t reached us yet
slipping through the leaves
to light up your shoulder
But I know
a wind comes up with the moon
The trees are whispering
Your bare arms will be cold

From above
from the branches lost in the dark
something dropped at your feet
You moved closer to me
Under my hand your bare flesh is like the fuzzy skin of a fruit
Neither a song of the heart nor “common sense”
before the trees, birds, and insects
my hand on my wife’s flesh
is thinking
Tonight my hand
can’t read or write
Neither loving nor unloving
It’s the tongue of a leopard at a spring
a grape leaf
a wolf’s paw
To move, breathe, eat, drink
My hand is like a seed
splitting open underground
Neither a song of the heart nor “common sense,”
neither loving nor unloving
My hand thinking on my wife’s flesh
is the hand of the first man
Like a root that finds water underground
it says to me
“To eat, drink, cold, hot, struggle, smell, color
not to live in order to die
but to die to live…”

And now
as red female hair blows across my face
as something stirs on the ground
as the trees whisper in the dark
and as the moon rises far off
where we can’t see
my hand on my wife’s flesh
before the trees, birds, and insects
I want the right of life,
of the leopard at the spring, of the seed splitting open
I want the right of the first man