EMAIL DETAILS

Beautiful and frightening and true.

RHB
202.333.1880

> On Jun 10, 2015, at 4:10 PM, Nancy Pinchera <npinchera@icloud.com> wrote:
>
> I bet your Dad would like this poem. I would like to imagine that he takes living very seriously:)
>
> Nancy
>
> On Living
> by Nazim Hikmet
>
> I
> Living is no laughing matter:
> you must live with great seriousness
> like a squirrel, for example--
> I mean without looking for something beyond and above living,
> I mean living must be your whole occupation.
> Living is no laughing matter:
> you must take it seriously,
> so much so and to such a degree
> that, for example, your hands tied behind your back,
> your back to the wall,
> or else in a laboratory
> in your white coat and safety glasses,
> you can die for people--
> even for people whose faces you've never seen,
> even though you know living
> is the most real, the most beautiful thing.
> I mean, you must take living so seriously
> that even at seventy, for example, you'll plant olive trees--
> and not for your children, either,
> but because although you fear death you don't believe it,
> because living, I mean, weighs heavier.
> II
> Let's say we're seriously ill, need surgery--
> which is to say we might not get up
> from the white table.
> Even though it's impossible not to feel sad
> about going a little too soon,
> we'll still laugh at the jokes being told,
> we'll look out the window to see if it's raining,
> or still wait anxiously
> for the latest newscast. . .
> Let's say we're at the front--
> for something worth fighting for, say.
> There, in the first offensive, on that very day,
> we might fall on our face, dead.
> We'll know this with a curious anger,
> but we'll still worry ourselves to death
> about the outcome of the war, which could last years.
> Let's say we're in prison
> and close to fifty,
> and we have eighteen more years, say,
> before the iron doors will open.
> We'll still live with the outside,
> with its people and animals, struggle and wind--
> I mean with the outside beyond the walls.
> I mean, however and wherever we are,
> we must live as if we will never die.
> III
> This earth will grow cold,
> a star among stars
> and one of the smallest,
> a gilded mote on blue velvet--
> I mean this, our great earth.
> This earth will grow cold one day,
> not like a block of ice
> or a dead cloud even
> but like an empty walnut it will roll along
> in pitch-black space . . .
> You must grieve for this right now
> --you have to feel this sorrow now--
> for the world must be loved this much
> if you're going to say "I lived". . .
>
>
>
>
> -------------------------------------------
> Nancy Pinchera
>
>
>
>
>=2