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LETTERS FROM CHANKIRI PRISON
1
Four o’clock,
no you.
no
Six, seven,
tomorrow,
the day after,
and maybe –
who knows...
We had a garden
in the prison yard.
About fifteen paces long,
at the foot of a sunny wall.
You used to come,
and we’d sit side by side,
your big red
oilcloth bag
on your knees...
Remember “Head” Memed?
From the juveniles ward.
Square head,
thick short legs,
and hands bigger than his feet.
With a rock he’d brained a guy
whose hive he robbed of honey.
He used to call you “lady sister”.
He had a garden smaller than ours
right above us,
nearer the sun,
in a tin can...
Do you remember a Saturday,
a late afternoon sprinkled
by the prison fountain?
The tinsmith Shaban sang a song,
remember :
“Beypazari is my home, my city –
who knows where I’ll leave my body?”
I did so many paintings of you,
and you didn’t leave me even one.
All I have is a photograph :
in another garden,
very at ease,
very happy,
you’re feeding some chickens
and laughing.
The prison garden didn’t have any chickens,
but we could laugh all right
and we weren’t unhappy.
How we had news
of beautiful freedom,
how we listened for the footsteps
of good news coming,
what beautiful things we talked about
in the prison garden...
2 July 1940
2
One afternoon
we sat
at the prison gate
and read Ghazali’s rubaiyat :
“Night
the great azure garden.
The gold-spangled whirling of the dancers.
And the dead stretched out in their wooden boxes.”
If one day,
far from me,
life weighs on you
like a dark rain,
read Ghazali again.
And I know,
my Pirayendé,
you’ll feel only pity
for his desperate loneliness
and awful dread
of death.
Let flowing water bring Ghazali to you :
“The king is but an earthen bowl
on the Potter’s shelf,
and victories are told
on the ruined walls of the king of kings.”
Welling up and springing forth.
Cold
hot
cool.
And in the great azure garden,
the eternal
ceaseless turning
of the dancers.
I don’t know why
I keep thinking
of a Chankiri saying
I fýrst heard from you :
“When the poplars are in bloom,
cherries will come soon.”
The poplars are blooming in Ghazali,
but
the master doesn’t see
he cherries coming.
That’s why he worships death.
Upstairs, “Sugar” Ali plays his lute.
Evening.
Outside, children are shouting.
Water is flowing from the fountain.
And in the light of the guardhouse,
tied to the acacias, three baby wolves.
Beyond the bars
my great azure garden opens up.
W h a t i s r e a l i s l i f e . . .
Don’t forget me, Hatché...
12 July 1940
3
Wednesday today –
you know,
Chankiri’s market day.
Its eggs and bulgur,
its gilded purple eggplants,
will even reach us,
passing through our iron door in reed baskets...
Yesterday
I watched them come down from the villages
tired,
wily,
and suspicious,
with sorrow under their brows.
They passed by – the men on donkeys,
the women on bare feet.
You probably know some of them.
And the last two Wednesdays they probably missed
the red-scarfed, “not-uppishy”
lady from Istanbul...
20 July 1940
4
The heat is like nothing you’ve ever known,
and I who grew up by the sea –
the sea is so far away...
Between two and five
I lie under the mosquito net,
soaking wet,
motionless,
eyes open,
and listen to the flies buzz.
I know
in the yard now
they’re splashing water on the walls,
steam rising from the hot red stones.
And outside, skirting the burnt grass
of the fortress, the black-
tiled city sits
in nitric acid light...
Nights a wind comes up suddenly
and suddenly dies.
And the heat, panting like a beast
in the dark, moves on soft furry feet,
threatening us with something.
And from time to time
we shiver in our skins,
afraid of nature...
There may be an earthquake.
It’s just three days away.
It rocked Chapanoglu Yozgat.
And the people here say :
because it sits on a salt mine,
Chankiri will collapse
forty days before doomsday.
To go to bed one night
and not wake up in the morning,
your head smashed by a wooden beam.
What a blind, good-for-nothing death.
I want to live a little longer,
a good deal longer.
I want this for many things,
for many
very important things.
12 August 1940
5
It gets dark at five
with clouds on the attack.
They clearly carry rain.
Many
pass low enough to touch...
The hundred watts of our room
and the tailors’ oil lamp are lit.
The tailors are drinking linden tea...
Which means winter’s here...
I’m cold.
But not sad.
This privilege is reserved for us :
on winter days in prison,
and not just in prison
but in the big world
that should
and will
be warm,
to be cold
but not sad...
26 October 1940
tr. by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk
Nâzým Hikmet calles his wife Piraye (Pirayé) with differen
names in his poems, because her full name was Hatice Zekiye Prayende (Hatiché Zekiyé Prayendé). Hatice would be shortened as Hatçe (Hatché), and Prayende as Piraye (Pirayé) in daily conversations.