THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW I LOVED (NAZIM HIKMET )

THINGS I DIDN'T KNOW I LOVED
it's 1962 March 28th
I'm sitting by the window on the Prague-Berlin train
night is falling
I never new I liked
night descending like a tired bird on a smoky wet plain
I don't like
comparing nightfall to a tired bird

I didn't know I loved the earth
can someone who hasn't worked the earth love it
I've never worked the earth
it must be my only platonic love
and here I've loved rivers all this time
whether motionless like this they curl skirting the hills
European hills crowned with chateaus
or whether stretched out flat as far as the eye can see
I know you can't wash in the same river even once
I know the river will bring new lights you'll never see
I know we live slightly longer than a horse but not nearly

as long as a crow
I know this has troubled people before
and will trouble those after me
I know all this has been said a thousand times before
and will be said after me
I didn't know I loved the sky
cloudy or clearthe blue vault Andrei studied on his back at Borodinoin
prison I translated both volumes of War and Peace into
Turkish
I hear voicesnot from the blue vault but from the yard
the guards are beating someone again
I didn't know I loved trees
bare beeches near Moscow in Peredelkino
they come upon me in winter noble and modest
beeches are Russian the way poplars are Turkish"the poplars of Izmir
losing their leaves...they call me The Knife...
lover like a young tree...
I blow stately mansions sky-high"in the Ilgaz woods in 1920 I tied an embroidered linen
handkerchief to a pine bough for luck
I never knew I loved road
seven the asphalt kind
Vera's behind the wheel we're driving from Moscow to
the Crimea Koktebel
formerly "Goktepé ili" in Turkish
the two of us inside a closed boxthe world
flows past on both sides distant and mute
I was never so close to anyone in my life
bandits stopped me on the red road between Bolu and
Geredé when I was eighteena
part from my life I didn't have anything in the wagon
they could take
and at eighteen our lives are what we value least
I've written this somewhere before
wading through a dark muddy street I'm going to the
shadow play Ramazan nighta paper lantern leading the way
maybe nothing like this ever happened
maybe I read it somewhere an eight-year-old boy going
to the shadow play Ramazan night in Istanbul holding
his grandfather's handhis grandfather has on a fez
and is wearing the fur coat
with a sable collar over his robe
and there is a lantern in the negro eunuch's hand
and I can't contain myself for joy
flowers come to mind for some reason
poppies cactuses jonquilsin the jonquil garden in Kadikoy Istanbul
I kissed Marika
fresh almonds on her breath
I was seventeenmy heart on a swing touched the sky
I didn't know I loved flowersfriends sent me three red carnations in prison 1948
I just remembered the stars
I didn't know
I loved them toowhether I'm floored watching them from belowor whether I'm flying at their side.I have some questions for the cosmonautswere the stars much bigger
did they look like huge jewels on black velvet
apricots on orange
did you feel proud to get closer to the stars
I saw color photos of the cosmos in Ogonek magazine
now don't be upset comrades but non figurative
shall we say or abstract well some of them looked just like
such paintings which is to say they were terribly
figurative and concretemy heart
was in my mouth looking at them
they are our endless desire to grasp things
seeing them I could even think of death and not feel
at all sad
I never knew I loved the cosmos
snow flashes in front of my eyesboth heavy wet steady snow and the dry whirling kind
I didn't know I liked snow
I never knew
I loved the suneven when setting cherry-red
as nowin Istanbul too it sometimes sets in postcard colors
but you aren't about to paint it that way
I didn't know I loved the sea
and how muchexcept the seas of Aivazovsky
I didn't know I loved cloudswhether
I'm under or up above them
whether they look like giants or shaggy white beasts
moonlight the falsest the most languid the most
petit-bourgeois strikes me
I didn't know I liked itI didn't know
I liked rain
whether it falls like a fine net or splatters against the glass
my heart leaves me tangled up in a net or trapped
inside a drop and takes off for uncharted countries
I didn't know I liked rain
but why did I suddenly discover all these passions sitting
by the window on the Prague-Berlin trainis it because
I lit my sixth cigarette
one alone could kill meis it because
I'm half dead from thinking about someone
back in Moscow
her hair straw-blond eyelashes blue
the train plunges on through the pitch-black night
I never knew
I liked the night pitch-blacksparks fly from the engine
I didn't know I loved sparks
I didn't know I loved so many things and I had to wait
until sixty to find it out sitting by the window
on the Prague-Berlin train
watching the world disappearas if on a journey of no return
NAZIM HIKMET Moscow, 19 April 1962