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!