A Poem from Nazim Hikmet - Since I've been locked up

In solidarity with all the imprisoned comrades in Turkey and all over the world!

And in solidarity with Kostas Sakkas who is on hunger strike since 4th of June.

"Since I’ve been locked up,

The earth went around the sun ten times.

If you ask the sun: “No big deal, just a microscopic run…”
If you ask me: “Ten years of my life…”

I had a pencil the year I was locked up
I wasted it away just in a week of writing

If you ask the pencil: “My whole life…”
If you ask me: “C’mon, it is just a week…”

Of murder, doing his time, Osman; since I’ve been locked up
Filled the seven and a half years and got out.
Wandered around a while, end up in the joint again of smuggling, and again filled the six months and got out.
His letter arrived yesterday; got married and expecting a child in spring…

The children turned 10, who were conceived the year I was locked up.
And the quaking, long legged peers,
Have already become one apiece wide-rumped, repose mares.
Although the olive saplings; still saplings, still children.

Since I’ve been locked up, new squares have been opened in my far away town,
And there, lives my household, on a street I do not know, in a house I have not seen.

It was cotton white, the bread; the year I was locked up,
Then it was rationed.
Here inside,
People shot each other of for a fist full of black loaf
Now again it is free; but dark and tasteless

The year I was locked up, the second has not yet started,
The ovens were not lit up in Dachov, the atom bomb was not yet thrown to Hiroshima.
The time flew by, like the blood from slit throat of a child.
Then that chapter was closed, now speaks the American dollar of the third.
But the sun has shined, since I’ve been locked up,
And from the edge of the darkness, they have risen up halfway, pushing themselves up through the sidewalks

The Earth has gone around the sun ten times, since I’ve been locked up,
And I again repeat my words with the same passion,
“For they;
are the ants on the soil,
the fish in the sea,
as many as the birds in the sky.
Fainthearted, brave, ignorant and child,
And they are who doom and create,
Whose adventures are within the songs”

And all the other,
As of imprisoned me, spending ten years
Is just talk in vain…"

                                                                                           Nazim Hikmet

Raise the Solidarity, Commemorate the Fallen Comrades!

"Those who died,
                        died in fight;
                                        were buried to the sun.
We have no time to mourn for them!

                        There is a raid
                                         a raid to the sun!
                        We will conquer the sun
                                        seizure is imminent!

                                                                               Nâzim Hikmet


They, who died not in fear, cried out their last breaths altogether, fighting the monster!
They, who died in agony, smiled for the last time confronting the enemy!
They, who died were Mehmet, Ethem and Abdullah, died climbing up the stairs to the sun!

Let us walk past them, until we reach the horrizon! Let us take the torch out of their hands, and carry it on

We call everyone to commemorate all our fallen comrades in the Taksim Square, on 22nd, at 7 pm.

Occupied Taksim