Nazim Hikmet
Loving You

translated, from the Turkish, by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk

 

Loving you is like eating bread dipped in salt,

like waking feverish at night

      and putting my mouth to the water faucet,

like opening a heavy unlabeled parcel

      eagerly, happily, cautiously.

Loving you is like flying over the sea

for the first time, like feeling dusk settle

      softly over Istanbul.

Loving you is like saying “I’m alive.”

 
Found In Volume 31, No. 01
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  • Nazim Hikmet
Nazim Hikmet
About the Author

Nazim Hikmet (1902-1963), the foremost modern Turkish poet, was a political prisoner in Turkey for thirteen years and spent the last thirteen years of his life in exile. Banned in his native land for thirty years, his poetry has been translated into more than fifty languages.