Tag Archives: Nazım Hikmet

If I don’t, if you don’t, if s/he doesn’t…

Nazıms question

What Nazım Hikmet, the world-renowned exilic poet and thinker of Turkey stresses in his call for collective strength in harmony,  is as follows: “If you don’t, I don’t, we don’t blaze, how can the darkness emanate light?”

Nazım’s invitation, to me, is one to awareness – a timeless gift to generations to come.  If they were to be willing to listen to it, of course.  No different than what John Lennon intended with his song, “Imagine”:

The following lyrics – in sync with the rest of the song, seem self-explanatory:

“[…]

Imagine there is no countries

It isn’t hard to do

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too

Imagine all the people

living life in peace […]”

These remarkable visionary individuals are no longer among us.  We, however, are.  I, for one, have found my niche in the sharing of my awareness for this vital thought processing among the living: love for world peace – one I have been yearning for very long.   It came to me thanks to the World Healing World Peace Poetry Anthology 2014 initiative by Inner Child Press.

Please know I am writing about this marvelous project not at all because I happen to have a submission of my own.  I don’t.  I won’t.  If I had or were to plan to do so, I would have to step back.  Here, I mean.  For I have strict self-imposed rules regarding self-promotion.  And, you all know how I treat my own work contribution – as you have seen my quite subdued announcement of my poems in an anthology by another publisher.

The conceptualization of world peace by the Inner Child Press is simply me finding home.   Through collective poetry creation in order to attract attention across the world, spanning over the boundaries of countries.  What a thought!  In order to lend a long overdue balance against the power of  violence – a trait of our  world that has enjoyed dominance for way too long.  But, that, is a learned trait.  How can it stand – we may respond with a false sense of confidence –  against the strength of love, an inborn asset of each human being?  It can.  It unfortunately can.  And it does.  It has.  It will.  As long as we keep letting it.

Peace in love.

“Poetry is what happens when nothing else can.” – Charles Bukowski  (Source)

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Hani

Nazım copy

Hani derler ya,

Ben sensiz yaşayamam, diye.

Ben onlardan değilim.

Ben sensiz de yaşarım;

Ama,

Seninle bir başka yaşarım…

[Poetry and Image Source: Nazım Hikmet]

 

You know what they say:

“I can’t live without you.”

I am not one of them.

I’ll live also without you;

but

with you,

my life would surely be something else…

[Translation Source: Self]

 

May it be through Turkish, English or any other world language – how do you define “living”? How about “life”?

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The Circle of Life

The Circle of Life

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo Source: Nazım Hikmet

 

[…]

In the circle of life

it’s the wheel of fortune

it’s the leap of faith

it’s the band of hope

‘til we find our place

on the path unwinding

in the circle…, circle of life

 

Some of us fall by the wayside

and some of us soar to the skies

and some of us sail through our troubles

and some have to live with the scars

[…]

Lyrics Source: Elton John,”Circle of Life”

 

 

I can’t be the only one who falls “by the wayside”, who has “to live with the scars”; whose emotional element overpowers reason; for whom the primal void inside – after having achieved its completion – is emptied with brute force again, only, this time, while you are conscious of the pain.  So, I ask: How, then, do you remain in “the band of hope”?

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