since i was thrown inside - deniz pernin

Since I Was Thrown Inside
by Nazim Hikmet (tr. Deniz Pernin)

Since I was thrown inside,

                       the earth has orbited the sun ten times.

If you ask it:

            "Not even worth mentioning,

                       a microscopic time."

If you ask me:

           "Ten years of my life."

I had a pencil

            the year I was thrown inside.

I used it all up in a week.

If you ask it:

           "A whole life."

If you ask me:

           "Come on now, just one week."

Since I was thrown inside,

                      Osman, doing time for murder,

                                  finished his seven and a half years and left,

                                  drifted around for a while,

                                  was thrown back inside for smuggling,

                                  did six months and was rereleased,

                                  his letter came yesterday, he's married,

                                  his child will be born in the spring.

They're ten years old now,

            the children who were conceived

                  the year I was thrown inside.

And that year's trembling, long-legged colts

             have long turned into confident, wide-rumped mares.

But the olive seeds are still olive seeds,

                           they're still children.

New squares have cropped up in my faraway city

                                   since I was thrown inside.

And my loved ones

            are living on a street I don't know

                                    in a home I've never seen

Bread was white, fluffy as cotton

                       the year I was thrown inside.

Then it was rationed

and here, inside, the people beat each other

           for a pitch-black, fist-size piece.

Now it flows freely again,

but dark and tasteless.

The year I was thrown inside,

             the second war hadn't started yet,

the ovens at Dachau weren't lit,

the atom bomb hadn't dropped on Hiroshima.

Time flowed like the blood of a child whose throat's been slit.

Then that chapter officially ended,

and now the U.S. dollar speaks of a third.

Yet, in spite of everything, the days have shone

                      since I was thrown inside,

and from the edges of darkness,

          the people, pressing their heavy hands to the pavement,

                               have begun to rise.

Since I was thrown inside

              the earth has orbited the sun ten times

and just as passionately I repeat

                         what I wrote

                                     the year I was thrown inside:

"The people, who are plentiful as ants on the ground

                                  as fish in the sea

                                           as birds in the sky,

who are cowardly, courageous,

                        ignorant, supreme

                                                  and childlike,

it is they who crush

             and create,

it is but their exploits sung in songs."

                       And as for the rest,

                                 my ten-year incarceration, for instance,

                                                        it's all meaningless words.