The Art of Marxism: poetry

Regarding Art

by Nāzım Hikmet Ran


Sometimes, I, too, tell the ah's

of my heart one by one

like the blood-red beads

of a ruby rosary strung

  on strands of golden hair!

But my

poetry's muse

takes to the air

on wings made of steel

like the I-beams

    of my suspension bridges!

I don't pretend

  the nightingale's lament

to the rose isn't easy on the ears...

But the language

  that really speaks to me

are Beethoven sonatas played

on copper, iron, wood, bone, and catgut...

You can "have"

galloping off

in a cloud of dust!

Me, I wouldn't trade

for the purest-bred

Arabian steed

the sixth mph

  of my iron horse

      running on iron tracks!

Sometimes my eye is caught like a big dumb fly

by the masterly spider webs in the corners of my room.

But I really look up

to the seventy-seven-story, reinforced-concrete mountains

    my blue-shirted builders create!

Were I to meet

the male beauty

"young Adonis, god of Byblos,"

on a bridge, I'd probably never notice;

but I can't help staring into my philosopher's glassy eyes

or my fireman's square face

      red as a sweating sun!

Though I can smoke

third-class cigarettes filled

on my electric workbenches,

I can't roll tobacco - even the finest-

in paper by hand and smoke it!

I didn't -

  "wouldn't" - trade

my wife dressed in her leather cap and jacket

for Eve's nakedness!

Maybe I don't have a "poetic soul"?

What can I do

when I love my own children

        more

        than mother Nature's!